How Policy Affects Early Childhood Care and Development.

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This presents the ECCD community with a major challenge: to agree upon measures of early childhood development that can be used for monitoring the developmental progress of children at a national level. This means moving beyond measures of programme coverage. In facing this challenge, it will be important to accept and preserve differences in cultural definitions of early childhood development. This means that the indicators used will not be comparable internationally (or even, necessarily, applicable at national levels in such heterogeneous places as India). But such agreed-upon indicators can be useful for planning, programming, monitoring and evaluation at either national or local levels which, after all, are where initiatives are taking place and where effects are expected. In facing this challenge it will also be important to respect the integrated nature of development. It would be unfortunate, for instance, to define development exclusively in terms of physical development or of mental development, leaving aside social and emotional development. This suggests the need for developmental profiles of children and the need for periodic measurement of the several dimensions to see how they are moving over time. Creating a profile of child development or of the status of children may be more a political than a technical question, requiring ways to get different parts of government and society to bring together in one place the various measures presently being applied to create the profile. It may also involve an even more difficult task of overcoming feuds within academic communities where various schools of thought defend at all cost their particular measures of child development. These potential obstacles notwithstanding, the goal is within our reach, as is being shown, for instance, in Jamaica where a process of monitoring the status of children has been agreed upon and is being tried out. 6 Efforts are also being made to develop appropriate indicators through a Childwatch project. Let us accept the challenge of defining early childhood indicators that can be used to monitor children's development as our contribution to making the Convention on the Rights of the Child a living document. Let us promote solid planning and monitoring at national and local levels of child development programmes in the best interests of the child and of our respective societies. The full text of the Convention on the Rights of the Child can be found on the Internet at the UNICEF site. For a print version, contact: Mr. John Bennett The Young Child and Family Project , UNESCO 7, Place Fontenoy 75700 Paris, France Tel: (33-1) 45 68 08 15; Fax: (33-1) 44 49 99 18 To review your nation's NPA, contact: 6 For information about this initiative, readers may write to Robert Myers at the Consultative Group, or contact directly: The Caribbean Child Development Centre, University of the West Indies, P.O. Box 141, Mona, Kingston 7, Jamaica. 8
Childwatch International P.O. Box 1096 Blindern N-0317 Norway Tel: (47-22) 85 42 88 or 85 48 41; Fax:(47-22) 85 52 53 childwatch@uio.no Copyright © 1995 The Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development Early Childhood Counts: Programming Resources for Early Childhood Care and Development. CD-ROM. The Consultative Group on ECCD. Washington D.C. : World Bank, 1999. 9
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The Consultative Group on Early Chi
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early childhood community needs a b
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(v) There must be a cloakroom, toil
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creating a policy to assure its sus
Page 9 and 10: What is the Process for Changing Po
Page 11 and 12: To help the government become aware
Page 13 and 14: activity among the current stakehol
Page 15 and 16: In the 1970s, Malaysia implemented
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Page 23 and 24: The costs of implementing the recom
Page 25 and 26: Endnotes 1 The material for this ca
Page 27 and 28: The communication may be face-to-fa
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Page 33 and 34: The programme is a community-based
Page 35 and 36: direct effects on the mother hersel
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Page 39 and 40: effectively with their children at
Page 41 and 42: Kagitcibasi, C. 1983. "Early Childh
Page 43 and 44: Chile: TILNA—Workshops for Local
Page 45 and 46: Ghana Submitted by Seema Argawal Th
Page 47 and 48: For more information on Early Child
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