Practical progress on life chances needs coherent action in the early years
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) is an international organisation akin to the Russell group of countries. Like a think tank they produce policy reports, but with countries as members, these engage governments in thinking about the future of social and economic policies. They also organise conferences, at their headquarters in Paris, which allow civil servants, academics and other interested parties to share evidence and compare case studies of practice.
One of the current strands of work is early childhood education and care (ECEC), on which the secretariat are now preparing the fifth in a series of reports entitled ‘Starting Strong’. While the policy for preschool education has been important in initiatives such as Surestart in the UK, there is a concern that knowledge is not being shared and practice is not developing as much as policy. Thus a decision was taken to hold the first conference ‘Ensemble for Education’ on practical action for early childhood education in Paris in June 2016.
‘Eduensemble’ is a different venture to academic conferences, being at the OECD presentation was in both French and English, with simultaneous translation over headsets, although many attendees were participating bilingually. That meant politicians and leaders from France participated more easily, with the range of perspectives being quite different to more Anglo-centric experiences. But the main difference was that academic experts were in the minority as presenters were from international organisations such as the World Bank, charitable foundations, and the private sector.
The global CEO of the Novak Djokovic foundation was quite open that the name opened doors and some ministers suddenly had more availability when a meeting with Novak was on the cards. Similarly, it was clear that the private sector can be much more nimble in targeting provision in disadvantaged areas without worrying about equity of access. The OECD and World Bank perspective also mentioned a number of times the need to get skilled women back into the labour force.
The focus on early education, as a conscious choice over the issue of care for children was one of the prominent themes echoed by different participants in a number of ways. In a pragmatic sense this is where governments can have an influence and social policy will make a difference and can be targeted to improve early child outcomes. But generally there was a recognition that good early education was beneficial to children and there was a strong focus on quality, achieving which will be the theme of the next Starting Strong report.
There was also some coverage of fourth Starting Strong report, which had moved from more general ideas about ECEC policy to a focus on measurement. Evidence about what is effective requires us to be confident that we are able to measure what is important reliably, but this is still something in need of development. Many process measures, such as staff quality and ratios are mentioned, but the coverage of formal assessments was agreed to neglect some aspects of children’s outcomes, and more narrative accounts while useful are not thought comparable.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which include education as goal 4 also featured in some discussion and the indicators for goal 4.2 are clearly a point of contention. Goal 4.2 states:
The indicators are at once too specific and too vague:
Early Child Development Index (ECDI)
The ECDI covers four domains but these are to some degree the usual suspects: language/literacy, numeracy, physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development. One year of provision is not thought to be enough, particularly for vulnerable groups, and the ECDI is also planned to measure the 36-59 month age group, meaning younger children seem to be overlooked.
Evidence about what is effective in early education is in much shorter supply than is ideal. This was demonstrated by the reprise of what we know featuring things like Headstart, Abercedarian and Perry Preschool which are all very old initiatives. This is a problem now we know that evidence is pointing to reducing effect sizes which seem to be associated with higher standards of provision for the control groups, whatever was normal.
Fathers are a particular blindspot for the early years in terms of evidence: we really know very little of how best to involve them to improve children’s outcomes. And there was consensus that the tiny participation of men in the early years workforce was an unusual example of men being the victims of gender inequality. For all the perceptions of the role, there was prejudice against men taking up positions caring for tiny children, with the example given that parents were reluctant to leave children who were not toilet trained in the care of men.
One of the factors which kept being mentioned was the issue of the need to target attention at children who were vulnerable. In a sense this was designed to capture the group of children who needed to be targeted rather than an assessment of their vulnerability. But it was also designed to mean children in circumstances of social disadvantage whether this meant they were in material deprivation or in the care of the state.
Targeting vulnerable children can be contrasted with specialist provision for children with special educational needs (SEN) such as learning disabilities. The premise of targeting is that these children are vulnerable to falling behind and never catching back up, having poor outcomes because they lost track of the system early on. Children with SEN need specific attention at an individual level rather than programmes targeted at groups and aiming to support them with a universal system.
The focus was very much on how the existing universal education systems could be extended down to reach preschool children as there is such an obvious relation. Targeting also drew in the concerns of social work which has a substantial responsibility for the life chances of vulnerable children. But it was striking that the potential of other professionals to contribute was not explored: for example, speech and language therapists training the early years workforce to better identify and support children at risk of language delay.
Language was identified by one speaker, Michel Boivin, as being the primary outcome to focus on, and to do so in detail. He recommended considering developmental trajectories of language, measuring children’s ability at more than one time to track progress. But it was striking that there was no representation from experts on these specific aspects of development, but more generally on the universal of early education.
Boivin also identified the public health concept promoted by Michael Marmot, ‘proportionate universalism’, as offering the best framework of the need to have universal and targeted provision. James Law and colleagues have recently proposed that speech and language therapists should engage with the universal and targeted levels of language development. And there is clearly potential to engage with health visitors who already have a developmental role for younger children.
Reference
Law, J., Reilly, S. and Snow, P. C. (2013), Child speech, language and communication need re-examined in a public health context: a new direction for the speech and language therapy profession. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 48: 486–496. doi:10.1111/1460-6984.12027