Friday 4th april of 2008

Reading ECCE report

Early Childhood Care and Education.

UNESCO 2006, 400 pages second printing. Paris.

The document is presenting goals, policies, program of education around childhood. This project has a conceptual framework that includes care, education for vulnerable and disavantaged children.

Goals have been set in 2000, and the main concern is about limited access of children to School. Even if there are progresses, world enrolment ratio stands at 86% of children. 21 million of primary school-age children are not going to school during 2004 due to poverty, lack of structure and teachers. The program is a powerful boost to education and development for both children and their families because it is releasing them from caring responsability while older can go to primary school. An index for 125 countries is updated to compare development state about ECCE. It appears that primary education is facing an increasing figure of intake and gross. Children that are not going to school have the highest needs because their parents are poor and their mother uneducated. Nigeria, Pakistan, India and Ethiopia are the countries where are living the larger amount of out-of-school children. Girls are facing several difficulties in terms of access to school, because teachers do not consider them with equality, their families are retaining them for homework or cultural barriers forbid them to go to school. At two different stages, secondary have lower and upper levels that have a better participation for the first stage and lower for the second. Providing teacher is a role of tertiary level where enrolment is up and access still limited.

There have been some measures taken in order to reduce exclusion for reasons that have no sense. Also the teachers are not enough in Africa and there will be a need up to 4 million. Secondary education is not very well structured and there is a lack of capacity to enrol children. Equality in school is not a reality for gender point of vu. Teachers are mostly expecting different results from girls and boys even if they should not do so. Literacy is a huge problem among adults and 781 million are not provided with the minimum of literacy skills. Conflict situation is a very bad context for education and it is afterward possible to restore stability in children lives after a war through education. As it is possible to say that children are learning from birth and the whole experience of life is a global learning process. Childhood is determined mainly by household poverty, place of residence gender and mother's education. Children rights are guaranteed with Early Childhood Education implementation. It may also reduce poverty by an effect on family’s level of life.

In finance chapters different notions are described and we can see that local measures and global involvement have a good effect on education state. The early childhood care and education is composed with goals and specific treatment of precise causes. Situation of educational network shows that girls still have a problem to access education structure. Also the state of health of children is a clue to understand why they are not all in schools. Private or public sector in this field have different importance depending to the continents and countries. Apart from health and education state, relation

between children and adults is focused on children needs. Poor children and teacher's recruitment are some keys to analyse the situation and recommend solutions. Decision making power coordination with global agency cooperation is required about young children programs. Experience of the programs has an interest by informing educational organisations about what kind of action is successful. At the same time of building the most effective projects, teams are observing very large involvement of child-soldiers and would like to provide basic education and psychological care in displaced people groups. Aid is provided by international support and reaches 11 USD billion a year.

Reducing social inequality is an aspect of childhood education and it can set better individual and group values. The fact that some countries have made childhood their priority shows that there is a main concern about present and future attitude of youngsters within society. One reason is that young population is increasing and funding educational programs creates other benefits for everybody. Leading to action, that policies and projects are several priorities to accomplish the ideas and improve the system. Due to the fact that children are not all attending school, it is a priority to enrol every single child. It is important to emphasise equity and inclusion. Public funding has to be increased and used for better purpose. Basic education must be prioritized and targeted to be the highest need. The concept of Early Childhood and Care Education must be developed at both national and international level. Global team in charge of implementation has to be reinforced and get better qualification. Also, monitoring the implementation of ECCE is a specific goal.

Goals of the millennium have already in challenge and there is only nine years left till 2015.

Dominique Deschamps