National early childhood care and education quality monitoring systems

Regular, reliable, and comprehensive data on young children’s development and the quality of their learning environments are essential to address the problem of poor learning outcomes in primary school and beyond. These data can be used to monitor progress toward national and global goals by identifying children’s competencies and areas of need. Such data can also help ensure that schools and community organizations offer appropriate settings to support children’s holistic development. With early childhood development and learning as a target for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Education 2030 Framework for Action, the need for these data is gaining greater urgency. [...] The brief is organized in six sections. The first section provides a background on ECCE and definitions of quality. The second section describes the methodology. The third section contains information on which countries have national ECCE quality standards and how they are developed. The fourth section describes evidence about what elements of quality countries monitor, based on three cross-national surveys. The fifth section describes compliance and how countries enforce the standards. The sixth section describes how four countries (Chile, Turkey, Jamaica, and South Africa) have designed and implemented systems to monitor quality. The paper ends with conclusions and recommendations for further research.