Suchergebnisse

Offers a comprehensive assessment of early child development across Tonga using the Tongan Early Human Capability Index instrument. The data has information on more than 6,600 children, ages three to five, living across 36 inhabited islands, and reported for 129 communities. On the basis of population figures from the Tongan census data collection provided by the Tonga Department of Statistics, 81 percent of three- to five-year-olds participated in the Tongan Early Human Capability Index. The report details the development of the instrument used to collect the child development data to ensure cultural validity and local relevance, while still capturing the fundamental aspects of child development that are consistent across countries and cultures. As well as the development of the instrument, other countries will also be interested in learning about h the method of data collection across a country with remote and isolated islands using an innovative partnership between health and education. Using existing systems and community governance structures, the data was not only collected but also disseminated back to communities to raise awareness and prompt community and government mobilization to support early child development. The process of developing and implementing the Tongan Early Human Capability Index across Tonga helped build national and district capacity, and is encouraging the establishment of community-based supports for children. Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners as well as advocates for the development and enhancement of systems to monitor early child development worldwide will find this publication highly significant

Early Childhood Development in Tonga offers a comprehensive assessment of early child development across Tonga using the Tongan Early Human Capability Index instrument. The data has information on more than 6,600 children, ages three to five, living across 36 inhabited islands, and reported for 129 communities. On the basis of population figures from the Tongan census data collection provided by the Tonga Department of Statistics, 81 percent of three- to five-year-olds participated in the Tongan Early Human Capability Index. The report details the development of the instrument used to collect the child development data to ensure cultural validity and local relevance, while still capturing the fundamental aspects of child development that are consistent across countries and cultures. As well as the development of the instrument, other countries will also be interested in learning about h the method of data collection across a country with remote and isolated islands using an innovative partnership between health and education. Using existing systems and community governance structures, the data was not only collected but also disseminated back to communities to raise awareness and prompt community and government mobilization to support early child development. The process of developing and implementing the Tongan Early Human Capability Index across Tonga helped build national and district capacity, and is encouraging the establishment of community-based supports for children. Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners as well as advocates for the development and enhancement of systems to monitor early child development worldwide will find this publication highly significant.

This brief presents findings from a census of the early development of Tuvalu's children, identifies areas of need, and puts forth recommendations to address gaps in service delivery to provide every child in Tuvalu with the best start in life. Universal health care and education are essential in supporting a strong and healthy development of Tuvalu's citizens. Access to quality health care services and the opportunity to participate in quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) provides children with the foundation they need to be ready to learn at school. The Government of Tuvalu has invested heavily in health and education, health care is free for all citizens and education is free for those aged 3-18 years. As such, encouragingly the country exhibits few disparities in access to health and education services, including that for children. For example, boys and girls have equitable access to pre-primary education, and policy mandates that ECCE centers cater to the needs of children with special needs. The Pacific Early Age Readiness and Learning (PEARL) program funding by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), implementing by the World Bank, provides technical assistance and analytical work to improve the participating country's evidence-base on school readiness and early grade literacy to inform short and medium-term policy agendas, including baseline survey on school readiness and early grade reading levels and piloting interventions. Herein, this brief presents data regarding the status of children's early health and development, as well as their participation in preschool and their learning environments at home. At a country level, this evidence will help to inform intervention strategies and policy planning in early childhood to strengthen the ECCE system with the goal of ensuring thatall children in Tuvalu reach their developmental potential.

AbstractThis paper examines the magnitude and source of gender gaps in cognitive and social‐emotional skills in early primary grades in rural Indonesia. Relative to boys, girls score more than 0.17 SD higher in tests of language and mathematics (cognitive skills) and between 0.18 and 0.27 SD higher in measures of social competence and emotional maturity (social‐emotional skills). We use Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to investigate the extent to which gender differences in early schooling and parenting practices explain these gender gaps in skills. For cognitive skills, differences in early schooling between boys and girls explain between 9% and 11% of the gender gap whereas differences in parenting practices explain merely 3%–5% of the gender gap. This decomposition result is driven largely by children living in villages with high‐quality preschools. In contrast, for social‐emotional skills, differences in parenting styles toward boys and girls explain between 13% and 17% of the gender gap, while differences in early schooling explain only 0%–6% of the gender gap.

BACKGROUND: The fourth year of the Sustainable Development Agenda era calls for countries to continue to invest not only in interventions and policies that will promote global equity and sustainability, but also in the monitoring systems required to track progress against these targets. A more pragmatic solution to measuring children's early development in low and middle income countries in particular, is required. This study explores the psychometric properties of the early Human Capability Index (eHCI), a population measure of holistic development for children aged 3-5 years, designed with the vision of being flexible and feasible for use in low resource and capacity settings. METHODS: Utilizing data from seven low and middle income countries: Brazil (n = 1810), China (n = 11,421), Kiribati (n = 8339), Lao People's Democratic Republic (n = 7493), Samoa (n = 12,191), Tonga (n = 6214), and Tuvalu (n = 549), analyses explored the internal factor structure and reliability of scores produced by the tool within each country. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analyses and internal consistency coefficients demonstrated that after local adaptation, translation, and different implementation methods across countries, the eHCI maintained the same factor structure of nine theoretically-based developmental domains: Physical Health, Verbal Communication, Cultural Knowledge, Social and Emotional Skills, Perseverance, Approaches to Learning, Numeracy, Reading, and Writing. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support the aims of the eHCI in being adaptable and applicable for use within a range of low and middle income countries to facilitate measurement and monitoring of children's early development, as is required for the tracking of progress towards the Sustainable Development Agenda.

BACKGROUND: Interventions to promote breakfast consumption are a popular strategy to address early life inequalities. It is important to understand the epidemiology of children and adolescents who skip breakfast so that interventions and policy can be appropriately considered. This study investigated the prevalence of breakfast skipping among a contemporary, population-wide sample of children and adolescents in Australia. METHODS: Participants were grade 4–12 students (n = 71,390, 8–18 years) in South Australian government (public) schools who took part in the 2019 Wellbeing and Engagement Collection. The prevalence of breakfast skipping (never, sometimes, often, or always) was calculated for the overall sample and stratified by gender, school grade, socioeconomic status and geographical remoteness. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine the relative risk ratio of sometimes, often, and always skippers compared with never skippers, according to demographic characteristics. RESULTS: Overall, 55.0% of students reported never skipping breakfast, 17.4% reported sometimes skipping, 18.0% reported often skipping, and 9.5% reported always skipping breakfast. Skipping breakfast was more prevalent among females, students in senior grades, and those living in socioeconomically disadvantaged and regional and remote areas. Analyses disaggregated by gender revealed that grade level gradients in breakfast skipping were more marked among females compared to males. CONCLUSIONS: Breakfast skipping among children and adolescents appears considerably more prevalent than previous research suggests. Drivers of breakfast skipping across population sub-groups need to be explored to better inform strategies to promote breakfast consumption. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12887-022-03284-4.

This paper presents the study protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a supplementary matched control group. The aim of the trial is to evaluate a community-based early education and development program launched by the Government of Indonesia. The program was developed in collaboration with the World Bank with a total budget of US$127.7 million, and targets an estimated 738,000 children aged 0 to 6 years living in approximately 6,000 poor communities. The aim of the program is to increase access to early childhood services with the secondary aim of improving school readiness.