Career Pathways

Four challenges facing the early childhood workforce

Vidya Putcha and Maggie Gratz, Results for Development

We know that early childhood personnel – preschool teachers, home visitors, community health workers - are critical in the lives of young children, but who are these workers and how can they be best supported? The Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI), a global, multi-stakeholder effort, has been working to generate new knowledge and resources to help policymakers and program managers better address these very questions.

To understand country priorities and ongoing efforts around the early childhood workforce, a team from Results for Development and the International Step by Step Association conducted 43 key informant interviews across 15 countries — Bangladesh, Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Moldova, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zambia — earlier this year. We spoke with 28 country experts from implementing NGOs, multilaterals, and research institutions, and 15 policymakers, including program managers and government officials. This series of interviews helped us identify country priorities, learn about promising approaches, and gauge interest from policymakers and officials in piloting a needs assessment tool for diagnosing gaps and workforce needs.

Countries’ priorities surrounding the early childhood workforce, as well as their main challenges in offering workforce support were unique and context-driven. Nevertheless, we were able to deduce the following four, overarching takeaways from our interviews:


1. Training is a core challenge that programs are trying to tackle.

Experts, government officials, and program managers consistently noted the lack of training opportunities for members of the workforce, as a result of factors such as the high cost of scaling up training programs, as well as a scarcity of skilled trainers. Respondents also perceived training programs, where they existed, to be of variable quality given the absence of national standards and guidance, limited emphasis on experiential learning, and challenges experienced in supporting workers with low levels of formal education and familiarity with child development topics.

While there was acknowledgment that implementing widespread and effective training programs was a challenge, we heard from respondents about a number of efforts underway to address these training gaps for frontline workers in order to improve the quality of ECD services. Some examples that were given include: development of induction programs to onboard new personnel and partnerships with universities and civil society organizations to improve or design new training programs or diploma/degree programs for early childhood personnel. For example, in Ghana, Sabre Education has partnered with teacher training colleges and the Ghana Education Service to improve the experience of student teachers’ placements. Similarly, in Georgia, the Coalition of Early Childhood Intervention Organizations, have collaborated with government and universities to train early childhood intervention specialists.


2. Recruiting and retaining a strong workforce is a major challenge, and few countries are experimenting with efforts to address it. 

Policymakers and experts face challenges recruiting qualified early childhood workers who will remain in their roles over time. While programs find it difficult to attract qualified workers in general, the challenge is exacerbated in rural areas. Additionally, once workers receive training and better qualifications, they may be incentivized to leave the program for other jobs. This challenge is very much linked to the issues surrounding training discussed above as well as the poor working conditions and status of many workers. For example, we heard that many members of the early childhood workforce receive low pay and have insecure contracts, despite long hours, wide-ranging responsibilities and heavy workloads. 

Although these were raised as barriers, few respondents described efforts underway to address these challenges. This highlights an opportunity for countries — often facing persistent budgetary constraints — to exchange information around potential solutions. However, one country where we did learn of efforts to improve working conditions was Kenya, where Community Health Volunteers in Siaya County have begun to receive stipends and health insurance coverage as compensation for their work to support early childhood development and health service delivery more generally.


3. Generally, countries are not focused on implementing mentoring programs or establishing official pathways for career development.

Despite the potential for these efforts to augment and preserve training program outcomes, and motivate personnel in their day to day roles, very few respondents noted efforts underway to establish mentoring or other forms of ongoing support to early childhood workers. Respondents cited the limited supply of supervisors and their lack of technical expertise as a challenge. Additionally, without program or personnel standards, many countries struggle to create pathways for workers to develop professionally. However, we did learn of initiatives that would lay the groundwork for the creation of career pathways, such as developing worker competences and certification and licensing systems. For example, in Ecuador, child care and home visiting workers are now eligible to receive a certificate of work competences after completing a two-month theoretical and practical workshop which covers topics such as early childhood care, nutrition, health, early stimulation, and engagement with families.


4. Policymakers want more data to better understand the workforce and find ways to support them.

Policymakers want information about their country’s early childhood development workforce, but are hindered by data gaps in several areas. Understanding workforce training levels, demographics, working conditions, and other crucial factors — across sectors and at all levels of government — can guide future policy development and assist governments in identifying resource gaps. Building this foundation of comprehensive information on the early childhood workforce is therefore a clear priority in many countries. Compiling qualitative and quantitative data on key workforce roles is necessary, but it is equally important for countries to assemble a systems-level understanding of the early childhood workforce and its strengths and challenges, which can inform policy efforts to strengthen this workforce.

Over the next six months, the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative will continue to build on what we learned from those who are working every day to support young children and families. These conversations will guide and inform: (a) a compendium of country briefs, which will highlight promising workforce practices across geographies and services and (b) a needs assessment tool to support government officials and program managers. Stay tuned for more updates!


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Teacher Pay in Latin America & the Caribbean

By: Sarah Stanton and Ananya Subrahmanian

Originally published by The Dialogue's PREAL Blog.

Teachers are an essential component in the success of any education system. High-quality teachers are critical to student learning, and competitive salaries are one of the most effective ways to attract and retain effective teachers. However, teachers in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region have fewer opportunities for salary raises compared with employees in other sectors, and the raises they do receive are often small relative to their compensation. The consequences of these salary policies can be felt throughout the region: rising rates of teachers—especially the most talented—leaving the profession, poor learning outcomes for students across the region, and limited opportunities to recognize effective teachers. A review of current policies reveals that most LAC teachers receive a salary heavily linked to seniority and qualifications, with limited opportunities to earn financial compensation for strong performance, and those opportunities that do exist are often for a one-time bonus rather than a permanent raise.

HOW ARE TEACHER SALARIES DETERMINED?

Salaries are most often determined by career ladder indicators, such as qualifications, years of teaching experience, or administrative positions. Although these indicators require a certain level of determination and ambition, there are also frequent opportunities to obtain them throughout an educator’s career. However, some salary raises are determined by performance-based indicators which can include competence-based tests, to assess mastery of content and pedagogy; teacher evaluations, including feedback from colleagues, supervisors, and students as well as formal observations and portfolio documents; and student learning outcomes, which consider test scores and other learning assessments. Unlike career ladder indicators, these performance-based measures provide financial incentives to teachers who prioritize professional development and student learning. Indeed, evidence has shown a strong association between performance-based salary increases and student learning outcomes. Additional determinants of salary increases include compensation for specific tasks beyond teachers’ standard responsibilities, for example working overtime or in a high-risk area.

Although compensation increases can involve either a raise of one’s base salary or a one-time bonus payment, the former is seen as a more effective reward for teachers. However, bonus pay is politically, technically, and financially easier to implement, given their one-time, fixed amount status.

The figure below shows the types of policies each country in the LAC region uses to determine teacher salary increases. Information was collected from 20 countries via government websites, Dialogue reports, and other policy publications.

Table courtesy of The Dialogue's PREAL Blog

Several key trends emerge from the data:

The majority of countries use a limited set of indicators to determine salary increases: Most countries rely heavily on qualification and seniority—both of which are career ladder indicators—to determine salary increases for teachers, and few countries use more than two or three indicators to determine raises. Mexico and Costa Rica stand out as two countries that include multiple and diverse indicators to determine teacher salaries, including career ladder and performance indicators. Overall, however, teachers throughout the region have fewer opportunities for increasing their salaries, since fewer indicators leads to fewer opportunities for financial reward.

Base salary increases are a more common policy mechanism than bonus pay for performance:  Only five countries in the LAC region—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico—have policies for bonus pay, and only Ecuador and some Brazilian states use multiple indicators. Bonus payments are not appropriate for recognizing achievements such as seniority and qualifications, which accumulate over time and do not fluctuate. Instead, bonus pay is consistently determined based on performance-based indicators linked to evaluations or student performance, which can vary from year to year. This heavy reliance on base salary increases rather than bonus pay means that teachers are consistently recognized for loyalty to the profession, but not skill in its execution.

Few countries with teacher evaluation systems use performance results to offer financial incentives: Thirteen of the countries surveyed have formal teacher evaluation policies. Most of these evaluation systems have been in place for a few years and are administered regularly, but surprisingly few countries use the results from these evaluations to determine teacher compensation. Only six of the countries with formal evaluation systems have financial rewards linked to a positive performance review, and in only five countries do positive evaluation results lead to an increase in one’s base salary, the exception being Ecuador, which has a one-time bonus payment. Within these six countries, the consequences tied to teacher evaluations results vary; Chile and Ecuador, which have strong evaluation systems, reward positive results with salary increases and penalize poor performance with extra training and, potentially, dismissal. Colombia and Cuba reserve consequences for negative evaluation results, but offer no reward for positive ones. Honduras, which has only just begun implementing teacher evaluations, has not yet developed any concrete rewards or penalties tied to performance. The Dominican Republic, which also bases salary increases off evaluation results, does not have a mandatory evaluation system in place.

CONCLUSIONS

While career ladder-based indicators such as qualifications, seniority, and administrative positions have long been used as a basis for salary raises in the LAC region, they fail to recognize exceptional performance or incentivize excellent teaching. This is not to say that these indicators are unimportant—they have the potential to increase job stability, prevent high turnover rates, and encourage commitment to the profession. However, they are over-utilized relative to performance-based indicators. The majority of the countries discussed above employ three indicators or fewer to determine teacher pay increases, but they rely heavily on those which are linked experience rather than performance. A policy that attempts to balance recognizing seniority with incentives to improve—by increasing focus on performance-based indicators —could be a more effective way to incentivize improved teaching and learning outcomes.  For example, Chile, which has one of the strongest education systems in the region, uses only three salary indicators, but employs both career ladder-related and performance-based inputs to determine salary increases.

Despite the lack of policies for performance-based pay in the region, the majority of the countries represented above have developed and implemented frequent teacher evaluations. Building these systems requires strong institutions and technical knowledge; countries should be applauded for their efforts to increase teacher accountability and encouraged to taking advantage of existing evaluation systems to recognize and improve teacher performance. For countries that cannot afford the cost of increasing salaries across-the-board, bonus pay could serve as a cost-effective starting point to reward teacher performance. In order for any of these policies to be effective, however, teachers and administrators must buy into the validity of the evaluation system and its use as a tool for determining pay. Improving opportunities for salary will incentivize effective teaching and improve the quality of the teaching profession and educational outcomes across the region.

This post is also available in: Spanish

The PREAL Blog is the blog of the Inter-American Dialogue’s Education Program. Find the orginal post here.