To improve a child's social-emotional skills, FH encourages playdates, visits, and organizes children's clubs with interactive games, like this one being led by an FH Peru staff member. — To improve a child's social-emotional skills, FH encourages playdates, visits, and organizes children's clubs with interactive games, like this one being led by an FH Peru staff member.

By Jana Torrico

Communities cannot rise out of poverty if their children do not thrive. That’s why early learning education and development programs that set a strong foundation for a child’s capacity to learn throughout life — across cognitive, social-emotional and language domains — are critical to later success. But how do we determine which approaches lead to that “strong start” global development practitioners strive for?

Experts agree that interventions within the first five years are the most strategic, cost-effective, and influential ways to alter the course of a child’s academic career. School success — a reduction in grade repetition, increased academic gains, increased salaries upon graduation, and, ultimately, escaping from poverty — begins during the earliest formative years, before primary school. It’s why the UN has outlined in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.2, “by 2030, all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.”

Many approaches are being tried around the globe, but the dearth of robust evidence from impact evaluations has been a challenge to achieving access, equity and quality in early childhood education (ECE). Across the 16 countries where my organization, Food for the Hungry (FH), plans or implements childhood development and education programs, we have had difficulty comparing disparate data from varying evaluations. What our sector needed was an effective global assessment tool that accurately measured, then aggregated and shared the data across multiple contexts.

In response, Save the Children developed IDELA, the International Development and Early Learning Assessment, an open-source tool that measures four key areas of early development: social-emotional skills, emergent numeracy, emergent literacy, and motor skills in children ages 3.5 to 6 years. With IDELA, every child is a “data point” and every partner who utilizes this tool is asked to share each data point as part of a worldwide, collaborative effort to aggregate what we’re learning about what’s working in early education. IDELA is now used in 70+ countries, and FH has launched it in 13 countries where we work, one of it’s biggest rollouts.

IDELA allows FH to share a common language and standardized definitions across different countries. When we refer to “emergent literacy”, for example, no matter where they live and what language they speak, our staff automatically think of skills like print awareness, expressive vocabulary, first sounds, and letter recognition. Implementing IDELA has made us better informed about our targeted early learning interventions. As a result, we are able to more effectively ameliorate, implement and advocate for better programs for the youngest among us.

We offer three brief case studies that highlight areas where IDELA has helped diverse local practitioners pivot and improve ECE:

Emergent Literacy

Overall low IDELA assessment scores told our local staff in Burundi that children here were not acquiring the skills needed for successful transition into first grade. Emergent literacy was the lowest-ranked domain, which spurred a two-fold approach to increase language development skills.

FH established common play areas in the community, where children can sing songs and use expressive vocabulary to communicate more with peers. At home, FH is training parents and caregivers through Care Groups to have more conversational interactions with their children, including using higher-level vocabulary in daily life. Households were also taught to involve young children in daily activities, like going to local shops and markets and learning to name items. We also encourage elevating expressive vocabulary with pictorial books that parents or older children can read together. When our Burundi staff ran into a challenge of finding stories and resources in local languages, they participated in a book translation challenge—which resulted in 158 different children’s books translated into the local language.

A world away from Burundi, children in the Dominican Republic (DR), also scored low in emergent literacy, especially expressive vocabulary. As a result, our local DR staff recommended building community libraries, and establishing “parent schools” in 52 neighborhoods where parents are taught early stimulation practices. By parents engaging children through books and storytelling, children learn to identify symbols and letters that will be the building blocks of their literacy development. We equipped parents with appropriate tools, even parents who are not literate.

In the Philippines, children dance along with their peers during an afterschool program. Through games and play materials, children can begin building social capital with their peers.

Social-Emotional Skills

In the DR, the IDELA assessment revealed a surprising trend. Social-emotional skills among children was the second-highest domain after motor skills, the opposite of trends we’ve seen elsewhere, where social-emotional skills usually score lowest. (Our hunch is that the social, Caribbean culture here inherently strengthens these skills within and between families.) In contrast to the DR, we learned small gains were being made in social-emotional development in Guatemala. A child’s social-emotional development is as important as their cognitive and physical development. But we are not born with social-emotional skills, such as empathy , awareness of our own feelings, and resolving conflict to build healthy relationships with others. It takes practice. IDELA data revealed to our Guatemalan staff that children don’t often play together. So, they began encouraging play and provided games and materials to help build early social capital. Our staff implemented early stimulation training modules into their Care Groups, and are also raising awareness about social-emotional learning with others who interact with young children, including healthcare facility workers and pre-school teachers.

Emergent Numeracy

When children in Bangladesh scored low across the four IDELA areas, FH’s Bangladesh staff took a closer look at the data and identified emergent numeracy as a particularly struggling domain, with 40 percent of children completing less than half the activities correctly on the IDELA assessment.

In response, our staff decided local preschool teachers needed improved training and classroom materials like number charts, posters of different geometric shapes, and basic arithmetic resources to improve number recognition. In addition, staff encouraged caregivers to involve children in daily activities like counting chickens and other livestock, and for caregivers to set aside time to interact with their children as they went about their daily chores.

Consistent assessment makes a qualitative difference

IDELA has become critical to informing the work of our early childhood development practitioners, filling in gaps that lead to more effective outcomes. We hope this innovative measurement tool will lead to even more holistic approaches that will someday encompass spiritual or invisible dimensions of overcoming poverty, such as the emergence of hope and care for others. When we better understand and meet the early needs of every child, encouraging them to flourish in every sphere, that “data point” and “outcome” will be a child with a more promising future.

One of the four key areas that IDELA measures is motor skills. In the Dominican Republic, children play with early childhood development toys like building blocks, which help with creative thinking, cognitive skills, and motor skills.

About the author:
Jana Torrico is the Senior Specialist of Global Education Programs for Food for the Hungry, an international relief and development organization graduating communities from extreme poverty in over 20 countries worldwide.

*Third-grade student, Umarjon, and his teacher, Firuza Abdullaeva, work closely together to ensure Umarjon continues to read if he cannot participate in class due to his illness.*

Third-grade student Umarjon from School #5 in the Bobojon Gafurov district in Sughd suffers from a serious disease that often prevents him from attending class. The children’s books provided by the USAID Read with Me project to Umarjon’s school have been vital to supporting his uninterrupted education.

“When Umarjon moves or sits for too long, he struggles with physical pain and tires quickly. To help calm him and overcome his pain, I read to him from the donated books delivered by his teacher,” says Umarjon’s mother Sitora.

Umarjon says that reading books makes him very happy. “I like when my teacher brings colorful and interesting books, especially when I am feeling sad. I enjoy reading and discussing the stories with my Mom and teachers,” says Umarjon.

Istambonu Khidirova is the school librarian at Umarjon’s school. She received training from the USAID Read with Me project and now facilitates in-class and out-of-school reading activities for teachers, students, and parents. Both Umarjon’s teacher, Firuza Abdullaeva and Istambonu noted, “We see Umarjon’s reading progress and his motivation to read more books. Sometimes he even participates in school activities, which is a great achievement for everyone.”

*Fourth-grade student Mehrona (in front) performs a national Tajik dance at a school event dedicated to Literacy Day.*

Similarly, Mehrona from School #62 in Istaravshan in Sughd is a 4th grade student with disabilities who benefited from USAID Read with Me interventions focused on inclusive education. Worried about her daughter’s orthopedic impairment, Mehrona’s mother kept her at home rather than learning at school.

Mehrona’s teacher, Dilrabo Mirsharopova, benefited from USAID Read with Me modern pedagogy trainings and understood that regardless of her physical challenges, Mehrona would benefit from high-quality inclusive instruction and interventions. Seeing Mehrona’s potential, Dilrabo brought several books to Mehrona’s home that were donated by the Read with Me project. Mehrona enjoyed these books so much that she soon began visiting the school library herself and began attending classes not long after. Dilrabo’s involvement enabled Mehrona to succeed in the core curriculum and ultimately become the best student in the class.

“Books are the reason I love going to school,” says Mehrona, proudly. “I already read 35 of the USAID Read with Me books and want to read all of the books in our library by the end of the year. I like participating in class and out of school activities, and even join in dancing and games. Everyone liked my dancing performance.”

BEC Members Pivot to Meet New Learner Needs during COVID-19

Effectively Measuring Early Childhood Learning and Development

Chemonics: Books ensure continued education for children with disabilities in Tajikistan