KEYNOTE ADDRESS
The millennium declaration was signed by representatives of 192 countries on September 8, 2000. One of its goals was that every child should be enroled in primary education by 2015. Unfortunately, too many children in the world today are denied this basic right. A sustainable end to world poverty as we know it, as well as the path to peace and security, requires that citizens in every country are empowered to make positive choices and provide for themselves and their families. This empowerment is unlikely to be realised without access to basic education.
Indeed, recent research clearly demonstrates that investment in the education of the very young generates significant returns. Analysis of longitudinal data indicates that what goes on in an individual’s early years — particularly in the pre-school period — can have a dramatic impact on that person’s life chances. This is not an argument against investment in primary school education! On the contrary, it is an extension of the argument; namely, that we need to invest in early childhood education (ECE) in addition to primary school education.
The most compelling evidence emanates from recent brain development research which has established a clear link between social and emotional development and cognitive develop-ment. In the words of Prof. Jack P. Shonkoff of Harvard University, “When it comes to brain circuitry, it’s better to get it right the first time, than to try and fix it later”.
This logic is easy to accept when one considers that 70 percent of human brain development takes place within the first three years of life. Just as it makes sense to build solid foundations when you construct a house to avoid spending money later, the same principle applies to human beings. Get social and emotional development right and cognitive development follows easily. Get that social and emotional foundation wrong, and the acquisition of cognitive skills is more difficult. Thereafter, an individual’s learning difficulties can become society’s difficulties if the problem is replicated among many individuals.
This observation is supported by Dr. James Heckman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for economic sciences in the year 2000. “The real question is how to use available funds wisely,” says Heckman, “the best evidence supports the policy prescription: invest in the very young.” In his paper entitled Policies to Foster Human Capital (2000), Dr. Heckman presents consid-erable data to illustrate that the returns are higher for every dollar invested in early childhood education than on dollars invested later in the education continuum.
The critical importance of ECE/pre-school education is also underscored by Prof. W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. In a paper entitled Preschool Education and its Lasting Effects: Research and Policy Implications (2008), Barnett concludes that public invest-ment in ECE confers a variety of benefits upon society. These include higher achievement test scores, lower rates of grade repetition and special education, higher educational attainment, higher earnings and resulting higher tax revenues, increased labour force participation of parents, and lower risks of delin-quency, crime and teenage pregnancy.
The message to all policy formu-lators and educators is, therefore, fairly unambiguous: Change the early years… change life!
It is against this backdrop that we must now consider progress towards the Millennium Development Goal of ‘Education for All’ by 2015. First of all, the EFA goal does not explicitly make reference to early childhood care and education. What we do know — accor-ding to the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 — is that only 53 percent of the world’s countries have ECE progra-mmes for children under three years of age. Most of these programmes are in North America, Western Europe, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
In India, the challenge before us is formidable. Fifty percent of the country’s 1.17 billion population is below 25 years of age — one of the youngest populations in the world in structural terms. Of this population, 360 million children are of school-going age — the largest child population in the world. One might reasonably ask whether there are teachers to put in front of such a large number of students. The sad reality is that, globally, there is a projected teacher shortage of 18 million by 2015. Of all countries, India will need the greatest inflow of new teachers worldwide — over 2 million.
Currently, only around 3.4 percent of Indian children in the age group 2-4 are in pre-school compared to 14.4 percent in the US. This has to change if India is to take its place among the ranks of developed countries. India needs to invest in high quality education for its young people — particularly the very young — and this means taking a strategic approach to ensure (as Heckman says) that available funds are used wisely.
Therefore a policy prescription for early childhood education in India might have the following characteristics:
Proven effectiveness. Policy makers should focus on replicating ECE models which have proven their effectiveness. Typically these models have relatively small class sizes, and well-educated teachers with adequate remuneration.
Quality assurance. Teachers in model ECE programmes (whether public or private) should be given intensive supervision and mentoring and be involved in a continuous improvement process for learning and teaching.
Regular review. ECE programmes should regularly assess every child’s learning and development to monitor the extent to which they are meeting set goals.
Holistic approach. ECE programmes should embrace pedagogies that develop the whole child, including social and emotional development and self-regulation. Adopting holistic pedagogies will positively impact children’s behaviour leading to later reductions in crime and delinquency.
Public policy. More broadly, ECE policy needs to be developed within the context of comprehensive public policy to support child development from birth to age five and beyond, with priority for socio-economically disadvantaged children who are likely to benefit most.
(Prof. Jeremy B. Williams is the Singapore-based chief academic offi-cer (global) of Knowledge Universe)