Written by USAID and BEC’s Early Childhood Education (ECE) Working Group

Meheret, a 5-year-old girl from the Somali Region in Ethiopia, walked to a shaded, quiet place outside her Early Learning Center. There, she discovered a colorful mat, books, and other play materials, including blocks. An assessor asks Meheret about shapes and numbers and her friends. Before long, she laughs as she hops on one foot. What do these activities have in common?

Meheret participated in an early childhood care and education (ECCE) assessment. An assessor asked standardized, child-friendly questions to measure Meheret’s emergent literacy and math skills, social and emotional development, and motor skills. Alongside thousands of other young children in Ethiopia, Meheret demonstrates the abilities she has developed throughout the school year. Policy makers, government officials, and Ministries of Education and Health find this data crucial to track progress towards early childhood goals nationally, and report internationally on contributions towards key strategic documents, such as the Advancing Protection and Care for Children in Adversity: A U.S. Government Strategy for Children to Thrive (2024–2029) (USG Thrive Strategy). The USG Thrive Strategy aims to integrate Early Childhood Development (ECD) interventions, including ECCE, into foreign assistance programs to support children from vulnerable groups and their families. Furthermore, the 2018 USAID Education Policy prioritizes, “sustained, measurable improvements in learning outcomes and skills development,” including at the pre-primary level. The current USG Strategy on International Basic Education (2024-2029) calls for government activities across the education continuum to, “generate and use data and evidence to drive decision-making and investments.” The early childhood goals are clear, but the question remains–how do we track progress to achieve these goals?

This September, USAID launched a new standard ECCE indicator, marking the first inclusion of a learning outcome indicator at the pre-primary level among USAID standard indicators. This significant achievement for young children’s education enhances the visibility of ECCE goals and the progress towards their achievement on a global level. Specifically, it means that learning outcomes for young children benefiting from USAID support will be reported to Congress of the United States annually.

Indicator ES.1.1-1, “Average early learning skills score for pre-primary learners targeted for USG assistance,” is meant to capture improvements in learning and educational outcomes, including emergent literacy and math skills, social and emotional skills, and motor skills. Dr. Abbie Raikes, founder of ECD Measure explains, “We’ve learned through Together for Early Childhood Evidence, that government and civil society leaders [in the Africa region] are eager to have reliable data on early child development to inform investments and programs. USAID’s effort to collect data on young children’s learning and development is a great step forward in building data-driven early childhood systems.”

IDELA assessment of Accelerated School Readiness (ASR) learner Samira Ahmed at Galma Pre-Primary School in Sawena Arda Woreda, Oromia Region.
Photo Credit: Ahmed Mohammed a CDA-ODA co-facilitator at Galma School

Tools for Measuring Progress and Impact

USAID implementing partners have flexibility in how to measure the indicator as long as they use an age-appropriate assessment with satisfactory psychometric validity, reliability, and fairness.

When choosing a tool, implementers can benefit from expert guidance from organizations such as USAID, ECD Measure, the World Bank, and the IDELA Network Community of Practice.

Implementing partners can use a variety of relevant tools to measure the indicator including the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) tool from Save the Children, the World Bank’s AIM-ECD (Anchor Items for the Measurement of Early Childhood Development) and MELQO, as well as national assessment tools like the South Africa’s Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM).

How Can We Measure the Progress of All Children?

Tools like IDELA, AIM-ECD, MELQO, and ELOM help measure programming contributions towards early learning and development of children, but concerted efforts are required to ensure inclusive measurement and capture and report the progress of all children.

Measurement efforts often exclude three groups of young children: those using a language other than the language of instruction, children with disabilities, and those affected by conflict and crisis. By taking the context and needs of different populations of children into account, we can make measurement approaches more inclusive.

1: Contextualize for Language of Instruction

Measuring early childhood development and learning requires robust tools adapted for diverse contexts, such as multilingual communities. Assessment tools must be sensitive to both the language of instruction and the home language of the child. To measure the impact of the kindergarten component of the USAID’s activity Renforcement de la Lecture Initiale pour Tous (RELIT) in Senegal, RTI responded to the multilingual aspect of the Senegalese education ecosystem. “To match the languages of instruction, we translated the assessment tool into five languages,” said Dr. Nell O’Donnell Weber, education research analyst at RTI. “It was a challenge to find data collectors with the required qualifications: bilingual in French and one of languages of instruction, the temperament to work with young children, the will to travel to remote regions.”

Similar language considerations occurred in Ethiopia, where the MELQO tools were adapted to the Ethiopian context, including translating them in six local languages from six regional states. The USAID/LEGO Foundation funded Childhood Development Activity (CDA) has been supporting the Ethiopian Education Assessment and Examinations Services to apply MELQO tools. An upcoming context assessment of the CDA activity will include MELQO tools to provide insights into pre-primary settings and children’s development in conflict- and drought-affected regions.

2: Contextualize for Children with Disabilities

Measurement efforts often exclude children with disabilities because they are not in school, have not received a formal diagnosis, or the assessment lacks accommodations. For example, if Meheret used a wheelchair, would she be excluded from an assessment simply because she could not hop and engage with the items related to the physical development domain?

An IDELA Community of Practice survey revealed that only half of the community users had ever used its tool for assessing children with disabilities. “Challenges to including children with disabilities in assessments is a common and critical issue that we have been trying to address” explained Filipa De Castro, Senior Advisor for Research at Save the Children. “We have developed a set of accommodations for IDELA tailored for different types of disabilities, such as allowing extra time for the child to answer, adapting testing items, or materials to enable children to participate in certain tasks.” With reasonable ECCE assessment accommodations, practitioners can track learning outcomes for all young children, including those with disabilities.

3: Contextualize for Conflict and Crisis Settings

UNICEF estimates 400 million children live in areas affected by conflict and crisis. In protracted crises, which can last between 10 and 26 years, young children may spend the entirety of their childhoods in refugee camps. Conflict and crisis contexts often exhibit data sensitivity, as people and systems may use information to discriminate, overlook, or oppress specific identity groups. In these contexts, data needs must be balanced with ensuring safety of children and their caregivers. USAID uses these important considerations to guide work in early childhood care and education. In Fiscal Year 2022, USAID’s implementing partners advanced pre-primary education in 31 countries, of which 11 experience conflict and crisis.

Next Steps

An indicator is only the first step of many in tracking progress towards global ECCE goals. It provides an opportunity for implementers, governments, donor and international agencies, and all stakeholders in the ECCE sub-sector to develop relevant guidance to move through the necessary tool selection, contextualization, adaptation, methodology design, application, and reporting. For more information on USAID’s ECCE indicator, register for the USAID Young Learners, Big Impact: Measuring Learning Outcomes in Early Childhood Education webinar on October 31, 2024 here.

This blog was co-authored by USAID and the Basic Education Coalition (BEC) Early Childhood Education (ECE) Working Group, writers include: Kate Anderson, Unbounded Associates; Filipa de Castro, Save the Children; Cynthia Koons, Save the Children; MaryFaith Mount-Cors, EdIntersect; Nell O’Donnell Weber, RTI; and Susan Werner, BEC ECE WG Chair.

Associated Resource(s): Fiscal Year 2024 Compendium of Standard PIRS for Education Programming