Across the world, just 40 per cent of three- and four-year-olds attend some kind of education. Where children are part of an early years programme, the quality varies enormously. This is something we all, as early education professionals, need to change.
Every child has a right to the best start in life. By sharing our best practices, collaborating with and learning from overseas educators – whether through formal projects or just internet forums – we’ll help children at home and abroad thrive.
Money is incredibly tight in many areas, so any techniques we have developed for making learning productive and fun, but as affordable as possible, can be invaluable. Most, if not all, countries struggle to retain staff, so advice on ways to attract and retain good people is also important.
Sharing fundamental knowledge and skills, from systems building to tailoring approaches to individual needs in the classroom, can create efficient, effective models regardless of where they are used.
Literacy is, of course, key to early learning, and the numerous ways countries have developed to teach children to read and write can be revelatory where experience of early years education is limited. There are already many literacy projects worldwide; many more, working with and empowering community schools and teachers, are needed.
In Morocco, 500,000 children miss pre-school annually, with only 35 per cent having access to education in rural areas. But through the use of international best practice – such as sessions for parents on child development – the Zakoura Foundation has greatly increased participation in early education and established 391 pre-schools.
Zakoura was one of the winners of the 2023 Khalifa International Award for Early Learning. Collaborative organisations like this need to be recognised, rewarded and funded to become focal points of early years excellence, in their own regions and beyond.
It is, of course, important that when sharing approaches across countries developers take account of and promote local cultures. For example, backed by foreign organisations, such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the JADENKÄ programme teaches children from Panama’s indigenous Ngäbe group, in their own language, about Western mathematics and the Ngäbe traditional model. It has 14 ways of counting and permeates community life, from agricultural techniques to religious ceremonies. JADENKÄ has improved maths achievement by the equivalent of six-months of school time.
Lastly, we need to encourage a wider adoption of proven ways to assess the progress of individual children and the education projects they are part of. This will allow us to bring more equity to children’s outcomes and provide new learnings that will benefit everyone.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal #4 aims to ensure that, by 2030, all children have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education. It is all our responsibility to be generous with what we know and collaborate to try to make sure this happens.
Dr Steven Barnett is a judge of the Khalifa International Award for Early Learning, open to those creating innovative education for under-eights.
The deadline for entries is 12 January 2024. https://el.khaward.ae