ECCD GROUP

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EFA ECCD Flagship Website

EFA Flagship Program on Early Childhood Regional Capacity Building Initiative

Background
Although the Jomtien Declaration and Framework gave international presence and sanction to early childhood care and development or ECCD and despite advances in the past 13 years-- reduced infant and child mortality; the knowledge base for ECD has grown as has the overall awareness of ECD of political leaders, funders, planners and the population at large; increases in enrolment in early childhood programs; some increased financing for ECD and some inclusion of ECD in national plans, there remains a lack of attention accorded to EFAs first goal including:

A lack of good and comprehensive laws and policies in National Action Plans, especially for children under 3;
An over-emphasis on education defined as schooling and not enough on the wider learning opportunities present at home and the community i.e. ECD programmes are still highly concentrated on preschool education, tend to reach children who live in urban areas and are from better off families;
Lack of funding committed to this purpose on the ground from governments

In addition, the two ECCD indicators defined in and used as a part of the Year 2000 Assessment of Education for All were both quantitative indicators of access or enrolment; no indicators were included that measured child development and learning or that assessed the quality of programmes. In addition, countries used different definitions and age ranges in their reporting, making comparison difficult the EFA assessment continued to help place ECCD on national and international agendas and demonstrated the potential value of ECCD indicators, there remains a need to create a core set of indicators that can be used internationally for advocacy purposes in addition to national indicators developed in-country and incorporated into standard reporting systems at both national and international levels.

Purpose
As an active participant in the EFA process at international, regional and national levels over the past 13 years, the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development (CGECCD), a diverse consortium of agencies, donors, NGOs and foundations that links with regional-based ECD networks comprising individuals and organisations involved in programming, research, policy-advocacy, monitoring and evaluation in the field, is also the lead organization (through the Consultative Group's Working Group on ECCD/EFA) for the EFA Flagship Program on Early Childhood Regional Capacity Building Initiative including the development and ongoing updating of the EFA/ECCD Flagship Website

The main objective of the site is to bring users up to date on goals/information related to ECCD in the Dakar framework, the purpose of the flagship initiative, updated information on those countries including ECD into their national plans (what are they talking about) which countries are underway with their plans and to provide resources and contacts for those who have not yet included ECD in their national plans.

It is hoped that the site could also provide information to help those working on their EFA Plans (or not as the case may be) to move beyond what the two EFA indicators.

Goals and Ojectives
The main goals of this initiative are to:

1) Highlight attention to the importance of Integrated Early Childhood Care and Development

2) To demonstrate/advocate the positive linkages between ECD and broader EFA goals for example, in preparing children for school, increasing access, achievement and retention in primary school and as a way of improving girls education.

3) To monitor the progress since Dakar of the first EFA goal at local, national, regional and international levels. In addition to look at how countries are including strategies to support young children affected by HIV/AIDS in developing EFA national plans of action.

Our current activities include:

Compiling, analyzing and disseminating information from research studies and other materials that demonstrate the positive impact of ECCD on broader EFA goals i.e. school readiness, retention and achievement in primary grades especially for girls i.e. ongoing impact assessment studies (both quantitative and qualitative) in Nepal which demonstrate the positive impact of ECD on achievement and retention in the lower primary grades as well as other studies in the Caribbean, Colombia, Cuba, Laos, Turkey, South Africa, Guatemala, India, Jordan etc.

Related to the aforementioned, the next issue of the Coordinators' Notebook (due out in late Spring 2004) uses an investment as well as a rights perspective to review/explore the potential benefits (including the broader set of economic arguments) that accrue to investing in programs directed toward improving the survival and development of children during their early years. In addition, the issue explores how what we know bears on global efforts such as EFA, Millenium Development Goals, UN Special Session on Children's 'A World Fit for children' and our progress to date on these initiatives.

Collecting case studies of countries who have developed ECCD strategies as part of their national EFA plans especially for children under three who are invisible in many EFA plans at country level. For example:

Tanzania and the work of an ECD Advocacy and Networking Group that among other activities produces an ECD/EFA newsletter and worked to ensure that ECD was seen as a priority at the MINEDAF VIII - Eighth Conference for Ministers of Education of African Member States in December 2002 (see http://www.ecdgroup.com/Issue_27_Advocacy.asp)
Jordan's national strategy on Early Childhood Development--their experiences and achievements (to be posted shortly)

Identifying and creating opportunities for advocacy and coordination/action at global, regional, national and local levels
Coordinating, communicating and disseminating further work of the Consultative Group and others on improving existing and developing better global and national ECCD Indicators (see www.ecdgroup.com/indicators for more information).

Progress on these objectives will be disseminated widely including through

For more information and updates, please see: http://www.ecdgroup.com/education_for_all(efa).asp.
To send in material related to progress and updates on ECD/EFA, please contact the Consultative Group – through its international Secretariat and the CG ECD/EFA Working Group at info@ecdgroup.com