Early Childhood

Investment in early childhood programming is increasing in response to convincing evidence on the benefits of supporting the social, emotional, and cognitive development of young children. As countries around the world work to expand access to early learning opportunities, it is critical toensure the quality of both the services and children’s experiences. High quality programs can improve outcomes for children and set them on a positive trajectory in life.

This paper presents findings from a large scale multi-arm randomized control trial implemented in 2014-2015 across 236 poor settlements across Bulgaria with the aim to improve full-day kindergarten participation of poor children, especially Roma and Turkish. It finds that removing the costs of kindergarten reduced the share of children aged 3-6 not registered in kindergarten by half – while also significantly increasing attendance by about 20 percent.

This construction manual is for agencies, engineers, and architects involved in aanganwadi repair and renovation or new construction. This report gives detailed information and guidance to understand and construct the concept of making better Aanganwadis, methods of child-centric repair or construction; role of building as learning aid (BaLA) in child development and developing BaLA - settings and BaLA - resources in aanganwadi premises. It will also help in understanding how to maintain aanganwadi and their respective role in all these.

This document is for all those officers, planners, and administrators who are working for aanganwadi integrated child development scheme (ICDS) development at project, district, or state and union territory level. This will give detailed information about visualizing aanganwadis, holistically planning and giving shape to the program with implementation process. This document will help in connecting the key goals of aanganwadi, activities with the physical environments that can give them a concrete form - in existing or new to be developed aanganwadis.

This policy note examines the status of Early Childhood Development (ECD) efforts in Bangladesh and presents the results of a rigorous impact evaluation of an ECD program. While Bangladeshi policymakers and their development partners are increasingly aware of the importance of ECD to the country's economic and social development objectives, empirical evidence of the effectiveness of individual ECD efforts remains limited.

This guide was prepared by the Early Learning Partnership (ELP) team at the World Bank as a resource for policy makers and development professionals interested in improving access to high-quality Early Childhood Development (ECD) services. It brings together a selection of approaches to ECD that have been implemented with promising results in low- or middle-income countries (or both).

Sustaining in recent years expenditure on early childhood education (ECE) at over a fifth of its education budget, Mongolia is a relatively high spender on pre-primary education. This report examines structural and process aspects of quality in Mongolian kindergartens, along with early development outcomes among children enrolled in these kindergartens, to assess the effectiveness and equity of the country's public investments in ECE.