A great deal of evidence demonstrates the significant effects that quality pre-primary education can have on a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development, growth, school readiness and future economic potential. However, only 42 per cent of children in sub-Saharan Africa participate in any organized pre-primary education before the typical enrolment age for grade one. Such education is often only available to wealthier children, and is not of consistent quality, nor does it incorporate the local knowledge of learning processes that pre-school children should be exposed to before commencement of formal schooling.

With support from Dubai Cares during the school year 2016-2017, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) delivered Learning in a Healing Classroom remedial tutoring programming to support local and internally displaced Nigerien children and refugee Nigerian children’s learning outcomes and retention in public schools in Niger. We found that, after twenty-two weeks of program implementation, (1) access to Healing Classrooms programming significantly improved students’ reading and math skills, and (2) adding low-cost, targeted Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions to Healing Classrooms improved students’ overall school grades as well.

La educación inicial de calidad es la base que garantiza el adecuado desarrollo de todos los niños. Los ambientes educativos seguros que ofrecen experiencias positivas a través de prácticas pedagógicas de alta calidad, mejor salud, nutrición e integración de las familias y la comunidad, influyen en el aprendizaje y el bienestar de los niños a lo largo de sus vidas. Por esta razón, el Ministerio de Educación Nacional desarrolló un modelo de medición de la calidad de la educación inicial y preescolar en Colombia. La evidencia que genera este modelo permite hacerle seguimiento a las condiciones humanas, materiales y sociales necesarias en los servicios de educación inicial para promover el desarrollo integral de los niños entre los 0 y los 6 años. Esta Nota de política resume los resultados de la medición nacional de la calidad de la educación inicial en la modalidad institucional, realizada en 2017 por el Ministerio de Educación Nacional (MEN) y la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad de los Andes. Asimismo, esta nota plantea algunas recomendaciones que se derivan de los análisis realizados.

In September 2016, the member states of the United Nations completed the process of adopting and defining indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; United Nations, 2015). Developed through a three-year, worldwide participatory process, these 17 goals and 169 targets represent a global consensus on the part of U.N. member nations towards an inclusive, sustainable world, centered around ensuring equity in all countries at a time of great environmental and humanitarian crises. This Social Policy Report describes the central role of supporting child and youth development in achieving the vision behind the U.N. Sustainable Development Agenda. The report then addresses the importance of developmental science in achieving the aims of the Sustainable Development Agenda through generating knowledge of child and youth development in diverse contexts, monitoring and measurement to reveal patterns of success and inequity, and building capacity for developmental science in all countries. We emphasize the goal that most clearly encompasses development from birth to young adulthood (SDG 4) and also describe the relevance of developmental science to the other goals.