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Specific Operational Strategies / Early Childhood Care and Development
1 Scope and Strategic Formulation
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The scope of ECCD strategies and programmes will be formulated through an inter-ministerial approach guided by the early childhood development subcommittee of the Cambodian National Council for Children (CNCC). ECCD strategic plan will also be guided by the early childhood care education (ECCE) master plan formulated by Government in 2001.
2 Goals and Objectives of ECCD Programs
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In accordance with the Dakar Framework, the overriding goal of ECCD initiatives to be orchestrated by the Royal Government of Cambodia can be summarized as follows:
(i) Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.
(iv) Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy, and essential life skills.
Associated objectives complementing these overriding goals include:
» Enhanced survival, growth and development status of all Cambodian children (e.g., reducing mortality among children under five from 125 in 2000 to 56 per 1,000 by 2015; see MDG goals summarized in Annex 2 for more details);
» Enhanced participation of all Cambodian children from birth to school entry in integrated and inclusive community-based health, nutrition, development and early education programs of good quality;
» Enhanced readiness of all Cambodian children to begin school at age six.
3 Guiding Principles
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These ECCD and ECCE strategies and programmes will be guided by a number of key policy and strategic principles summarised in the box below.
Early Childhood Care and Development: Guiding Principles
» Low Cost: Effective high-quality programs do not depend on expensive toys, materials or equipment but make maximum use of the objects and interactions available in conjunction with routines of daily living.
» Inclusivity: Inclusive education can begin in community-based groupings of young children. All programs operate on the principle that all are included, none is excluded.
» Readiness: Infancy and early childhood are critical periods for the development of brain pathways, neuro-endocrine and neuro-immune systems, and sensitive periods for perceptual and language development.
» Efficiency: Community-based programs need to maximise the opportunities for child-to-child and adult-to-child interactions, and thus group sizes and care-giver-to-child ratios should be as small as possible to minimise the need for special facilities and supervisory arrangements.
» Equity: Limited resources to ensure that all children are 'ready to learn' when they enter school imply that resources must be directed to those children and families least able to afford to pay for services, but most likely to benefit from some form of school readiness program.
» Integration: Sectoral and ministerial boundaries must not impede good community-based programming, management and monitoring. Integrated, regular child-monitoring can help bridge traditional disciplinary and administrative barriers to integrated services and programs.
4 Issues and Challenges
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The current document does not afford space for a detailed situational analysis of ECCD needs in Cambodia. Such an analysis can be found in Annex 1 attached to this document. It should suffice to say, however, that more girls complete higher levels of education, seek meaningful work in their communities, and some become interested in working with children in professional or para-professional roles, their economic contributions are likely to become increasingly significant. Expanded ECCD is both a critical gap in national investment priorities, and an important potential employment option for school graduates. Therefore, it is essential that Cambodia aims to be well prepared for quality ECCD programs for children that also provide enhanced employment options for working mothers.
Traditionally, Cambodia's primary response to ECCD needs has been through the provision of formal pre-schooling, which is highly limited in scope and tends to favor wealthier segments of the populations in urban areas. 'Privatisation' of early childhood programs is at best a long-term solution for a limited number of families who can afford to pay. For some time to come, high quality, community-supported programs of integrated child care, and early childhood education opportunities for children from poorer families will need to be publicly funded.
MoEYS policy does not envisage a nation-wide downward expansion of the primary cycle of six years to include pre-primary education for five-year-olds. Current policy within MoEYS is towards more family-focused and community-based approaches to evolve for children under six, linked to poverty-focused publicly funded ECCD for most disadvantaged communities.
ECCD programming will progressively evolve into a shared community, NGO, donor, private sector and inter-ministerial responsibility. Additionally, new community-based strategies, new funding modalities and increased community capacity will evolve as programs and services for early childhood expand. ESSP plans assume a projected increase in the non-public (e.g. private, NGO-supported, community-supported) share of operating programs for three-to-five-year-old children.
Public financing of ECCD programs will be increasingly directed to expanding access to quality programs for children from poorest families, contrary to the current pattern of funding of pre-school classes in more affluent urban areas. MoEYS' recurrent budgetary offsets can be progressively realised, as public funding for existing pre-primary programs in more affluent communities is phased out, and the costs of such programs are increasingly borne by families who can afford to pay.
The key challenge for pre-school education will be to take advantage of the ESSP financing 'window' to evolve, trial, evaluate and expand low-cost home and community-based ECCD programs that are more comprehensive and inter-disciplinary in focus than ECCE, and are targeted at children from poorest families. This will be challenging, as these are communities where good models, infrastructure and experienced providers may not exist.
In order to meet the challenge of community-based care, targeted communities will require strategic assistance to establish, operate, manage, maintain and document low-cost, family-focused, inclusive and community-based ECCD programs that integrate health, nutrition and education components for all children. This will require participatory community-level planning, facilitation, technical assistance and a high degree of inter-ministerial co-operation and co-ordination. The ECCD Sub-Committee of the National Co-ordinating Council for Children (CNCC) will play a key role in achieving these expectations.
5 Operational Strategies
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A number of strategic directions have emerged from situation analyses of the ECCE sector. Some of the more key strategies in this regard include the need to move the sector beyond narrow targeting within the preschool system to include all children from conception through early childhood and the early schooling years. In order to move ECCE in this direction, there is a need for a policy and operational framework through which to guide the development of community-based, family-based, and facility-based programs with integrated health, nutritional, and educational aspects. Such programs will require the need for careful planning in capacity building and child care career opportunities for ECCE workers and volunteers.
Detailed ECCD and ECCE programmes will be designed as part of the EFA plan evolution in 2003 and beyond. It is anticipated that ECCD and ECCE programmes will use a three pronged strategy involving the existing pre-school network and soon to be introduced home and community-based approaches. These approaches will draw on lessons learnt from the current pre-school programme and also pilot programmes operated by NGOs for the expansion of a play group approach, with greater involvement of voluntary ECCD staff, parents and community workers in planning and implementation. As part of Government strategy to decentralise, the Early Childhood Education Department (ECED) will play the role of a catalyst but will not implement these programmes directly. It is also anticipated that the role of MoEYS will focus on curriculum development and materials, staff development and quality assurance. It is anticipated that ECCE programme will be designed by late 2003.
For broader ECCD programme covering the age range of children under six, it is anticipated that an ECCD master plan will be prepared in 2003. This will cover the necessary health education, nutrition education and related health programmes and identify the potential roles of various government ministries, NGOs and community groups in the management and financing of these ECCD programme, guided by the principles above.
The ECCD Plan will also identify capacity building needs at several levels. At the central level, capacity building will include: a) the design and development of curricula and materials for community-based programs; b) training of community facilitators who can assist communities to develop and operate low-cost programs for families and children. At the provincial and commune levels, capacity needs are: a) training of pre-school teachers, community volunteers, and IECD program coordinators; b) training and support of community animators/facilitators; and c) the selection, initial training, ongoing support and in-service training of community child-care assistants who manage the day-to-day coordination and care of small community groups.
With limited national, community and family resources, it is critical to encourage community-supported, low-cost programming that takes maximum advantage of the time and assistance of people who enjoy caring for and stimulating children through day-to-day activities that focus on interaction, play and informality. As more young people complete higher levels of schooling but may wish to remain in their communities and contribute, there is an increasing pool of talents that can be encouraged to consider child-care as a career. Investing in the training of young people to help facilitate programs at community level also represents an investment in more confident future parents.
It is anticipated that the ECCD programme priorities will incorporate the following:
» Developing integrated health, growth and development child records.
» Addressing quality and accountability through child monitoring.
» Monitoring the status of Cambodia's children.
» Community-based systems for tracing and tracking children.
» New roles for ECCD professionals.
» Maintaining the cultural identity of young minority children.
» Encouraging, developing, documenting and financing community-based programs.
» From inclusive early education to inclusive communities-based ECCD.
Priority actions for ECCD within the EFA Plan for the medium-to-longer-term will largely be determined by what is achieved in addressing the early developmental needs of school entrants; three-five-year-old children in community-based programs; and changes to survival, health, growth and all-round developmental status of children from conception to the early school years.
The EFA plan for ECCD will take account of operational research and advocacy strategies. Government recognises that the changing survival, growth and all-round developmental status of Cambodia's children needs to be reviewed annually, on the basis of a planned series of surveys and studies. ECCD strategies will take account of accumulated information from communities where integrated child monitoring is fully operational. The initiation and support of cohort-tracking studies will be an important direction, to ensure that longer-term benefits of enhanced care of women and children are documented.
Against this background, the EFA plan will respond to the challenge to better understand the links between early care and later learning and health outcomes, and to examine the costs and benefits of improved health, nutrition and stimulation of young children, there is a need to comprehensively address the policy and operational frameworks within which community-based, family-based and facility-based integrated health, nutrition and education programs can be developed and supported.
The EFA plan includes expanded community-based and operated programs targeted to ensure full participation of children under six; it is, indeed, an important component of EFA planning in Cambodia. As publicly funded programs expand for families most in need of relief from child care and for children most in need of enhanced 'readiness', there will be a key role for NGO and donor partners to evolve new approaches that will lead to universal pre-schooling but without reliance on the scarce budgetary resources of MoEYS.
In the medium-to-longer term, MoEYS will continue to play a key role at all levels of the system in training, standards moderating, development of curricula and sustainable, low-cost materials, and quality monitoring. ECCE is not necessarily an area that will require the development of textbooks or prescriptive guides, but rather one that encourages every community to take advantage of its own resources and the enthusiasm of young children to learn. This shift from formal to more informal strategies will necessarily need to evolve over the medium-term, based on new approaches to organising, managing and funding community-based programs that have been developed, monitored, and refined in the short-term.
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