Country study

The Early Childhood Workforce Initiative Country Study Series examines ways to strengthen and scale up a quality workforce. The first of these studies, Supporting the early childhood workforce at scale: The Cuna Más home visiting program in Peru, focuses on Cuna Más, a large-scale ECD program in Peru.

As one of few home visiting programs operating – and having been evaluated – at scale in low- and middle-income countries, Cuna Más holds valuable workforce lessons that may resonate more broadly with ECD programs and policymakers seeking to reach young children and families around the world:

• Supervision in the field is critical for the home visiting workforce, particularly in rural contexts where many workers have limited training or experience and work independently much of the time.

• In addition to delivering important content, educational materials are critical for empowering community home visitors who may not have the training or experience to otherwise provide guidance to young children and families.

• It is important to identify and address workers’ travel-related barriers, especially in rural or remote areas

• Career ladders and pay scales can reward both professionals and volunteers for their dedication, retain and leverage the experience of high-performing individuals, and encourage strong candidates to see working in ECD as a viable career path, rather than temporary employment.

Home visiting is often used to reach vulnerable young children as well as their caregivers. Trained individuals regularly visit a caregiver and child to improve parenting behaviors, the home environment, and impact child outcomes. The Cuna Más home visiting service enjoys relatively high coverage and early results are promising: a recent impact evaluation by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found large effects on children’s cognitive and language development. However, operating at scale presents challenges to quality and sustainability.

Review of Occupational Role Profiles in Ireland in Early Childhood Education and Care presents a profile for the early childhood profession in Ireland.

The aim is to develop the Irish early childhood care and education sector into a genuine Competent System. A central requirement for achieving this goal is a shared orientation for all practitioners working with children from birth to eight years, regardless of occupational status, job title and level of formal qualification.

The concept of Competent Systems in early childhood has been developed by the CoRe project – an international study that investigated Competence Requirements in Early Childhood Education and Care on behalf of the European Commission (Urban, Vandenbroeck, Van Laere, Lazzari, & Peeters, 2011). Central to a competent system is that shared orientations are not only required of practitioners ‘on the ground’ but of all professionals and institutions that together constitute the early childhood system: early childhood settings, training and professional preparation, research, regulation and governance, inspection and evaluation.

The Best Teachers for Our Littlest Learners? Lessons from Head Start's Last Decade aims to inform efforts to strengthen the early childhood workforce by documenting the current state of the Head Start workforce in the United States. Through five parts, this paper examines the effects of recent efforts to improve the skills of Head Start teachers. This paper includes:

• a review the evolution of Head Start workforce policy over the last 50 years;
• an analysis of the impact of the most recent reauthorization of Head Start;
• case studies of the evolution of the Head Start workforce in four states;
• a discussion of how the broader policy and research context has evolved since the last reauthorization of Head Start; and
• policy recommendations to strengthen the Head Start workforce.

Describing the Preparation and Ongoing Professional Development of the Infant/ Toddler Workforce: An Analysis of the National Survey for Early Care and Education Data presents an analysis describing the professional development activities of the United States’ Infant/Toddler (I/T) workforce. The analyses shared in this brief aim to help the filed better understand the strengths and needs of the I/T workforce in center-based and home-based early care and education programs.

Child Care: Research-Based Policy Recommendations for Executive and Legislative Officials in 2017 presents the following set of reccomenations:

• Use regional market rate survey data to inform a tax credit formula that will provide a true benefit to families.
• Support a highly effective child care workforce with scholarships for training and education.
• Use caution when amending child care regulations, specifically child-teacher ratios and group size requirements.

This short policy brief was released by Child Trends.

The early childhood development sector plays an important role in fostering the education, health and care of young children. Early childhood education and care services are currently the subject of significant reforms nationally. These reforms have substantial implications for the associated workforce. This report, the second of three on education and training workforces, focuses on the early childhood development workforce. It follows the Vocational Education and Training workforce report released in May 2011. The third report, on the Schools workforce, is underway and will be completed in April next year.

The Commission’s recommendations and findings seek to support the future development of the early childhood workforce required to underpin the nationally agreed reforms. In particular, guidance is provided on the provision of quality early childhood education and care services to children with additional needs, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and children in rural and remote locations.

This end of project evaluation examined how well Children First (CF) had responded to Mid Term Review recommendations as well as evaluation questions regarding innovative, sustainable and effective models of service delivery; quantity, quality and timeliness of results; capacity development for partners and communities; and institutionalization of models within relevant government structures.

CF sought to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe by developing and improving on effective models of care and support for OVC and leveraging the experience of national and community-based organizations to increase access to quality holistic services for OVC. CF sought to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe by developing and improving on effective models of care and support for OVC and leveraging the experience of national and community-based organizations to increase access to quality holistic services for OVC. Over the five-year project period, CF included 22 partner organizations that provided education, health, child protection services and advocacy for OVC.

This research overviewed the present situation of Korean early childhood education and care workforce's certification, education and training, and working conditions, according to the elements to assure the quality of teachers. Results show that structure and condition of the initial teacher training system, certificating system, professional development system and working environment and treatment of kindergarten teachers were slightly better than child care center teachers', and national/public kindergarten teachers' were better than private kindergarten teachers'. The hidden issues behind it such as marginalization, traditional child care discourse and the underestimation of caring were pointed out, which must be considered in addition to the elements related to teachers' quality that appear on the surface, when the integration plan of kindergarten and child care center teachers is discussed.

Research suggests that, when it comes to early childhood education and care, quality matters most. A growing number of countries are establishing monitoring systems to ensure quality and accountability in these programmes.

This new publication explores how countries can develop and use these systems to enhance service and staff quality for the benefit of child development. It offers an international perspective and concrete examples to help policy makers, monitoring experts and practitioners in the field develop their own monitoring policies and practices.

ECEC professionals’ qualifications and working conditions are inseparably linked to the quality of education and care children receive. This series of reports present why do workforce qualifications, education, training and working conditions matter for better child development. Each of the reports also describe where each of the respective countries (Slovak Republic, Japan and Finland) stand compared to other countries in terms of workforce qualifications, training and working conditions, what are the challenges they face and what strategies have been employed in order to address those challenges.