Abstract
The topic of early childhood development (ECD) has been edging up the World Bank agenda. There has been a tranche of recent publications on the topic. In 2011 the World Bank published a booklet The Impact of Poverty, Shocks and Human Capital Investments in Early Child Development (Alderman, 2011). This booklet, in turn, contributed to its wider education strategy, Learning for All: Investing in People’s Knowledge and Skills to Promote Development (World Bank, 2011a), in which early childhood development has a clearly identified role. The World Bank has also published guides and handbooks on early childhood, a toolkit for assessing early child development in poor countries (Fernald et al., 2009) and Investing in the Future: An Early Childhood Development (ECD) Guide for Policy Dialogue and Project Preparation (Naudeau et al., 2010) which offer a practical guide on programming for use around the world. Most recently, World Bank staff has been working on a policy-rating scheme known as SABER — System Assessment and Benchmarking Educational Results. This consists of 125 questions which will enable the World Bank to classify countries as ‘latent’, ‘emerging’, ‘established’ or ‘advanced’ in their ECD systems. SABER does not contain any discussion about policy goals or values, but is regarded as a purely technical and empirical document designed to elicit ‘known facts’ (Garcia, 2011).
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Imoh, A.TD., Ame, R. (2012). The Rhetoric and Realities of Early Childhood Programmes Promoted by the World Bank. In: Imoh, A.TD., Ame, R. (eds) Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and the Global. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283344_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283344_5
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