Program Summary

To help rural children under school age obtain appropriate care and development services, and Plan China will cooperate to improve the quality of early child education and care in rural China. The Early Childhood Education (ECCD) program approaches suit rural educational methods, have low cost and investment, and meet the needs of children’s growth and development. The program will increase the capacity of stakeholders, provide child-centred and community-based ECCD services, enhance community, parent, and child participation and improve the quality of early education.

Why we are doing it?

Few rural children in China are unable to obtain the necessary care and education in their early childhood that provides basic competencies and guarantees physical development. The main reasons are lack of basic services in rural areas, low knowledge of pre-natal care, the low quality and high cost of services, lack of parenting support, difficulty in accessing pre-school education for poor families and unsanitary water and hygiene conditions in rural communities.

A large part of a person’s cognitive and physical development depends on the care, nutrition and environmental stimuli received before the age of six. In China, less than 5% of children under 3 years-old have access to early childhood care and development (ECCD), and less than 35% of children in rural China have any education before enrolment in primary school. The government investment in pre-school education accounts for only 0.058% of China’s national GDP.

Our Approach

The ECCD project will be implemented across multiple provinces in 3 stages:

1.   Teachers and care givers will be trained on child-centred ECCD methodology and become local trainers.

2.   Plan China will build the local governments’ capacity to effectively manage ECCD services and awareness of key themes such as child rights and gender equality.

3.   Plan China will select suitable comprehensive proposals by the local governments to fund software (local trainers of teachers and health workers trained in the first stage will train their peers and conduct awareness raising activities with care givers) and hardware construction such as kindergarten buildings, sanitary latrines and play equipment.

Program Goals

To demonstrate quality, cost-effective ECCD service in selected poor rural areas of China by 2010.

Program Activities

·      Development of ECCD training materials to advocate to caregivers

·      ECCD training of trainers and extended training to teachers and health workers

·      Support for ECCD hardware facilities

·      Mainstream successful experiences and practices within the government’s education framework

Program Partners

·      Country education bureaus (CEB) develop their counties’ ECCD plans based on the project framework designed by Plan China. The CEB implement most of project activities with Plan China’s supervision and support.

·      Nokia is providing 6 million EU for this landmark program.

Future of the Program

As the government increases its investment in ECCD in the future, Plan China’s project will benefit more children across China as it expands into more provinces.

Impact

The Early Childhood Care and Development project will enable the large number of rural children, especially girls and underprivileged groups, to gain high quality early care and development services. Specifically, it will ensure:

·      A high quality early child care and development model is extended to rural areas.

·      Parental behaviour is influenced ensuring that parents are more willing and able to, deliver higher quality care to children under 6 years-old.

·      The government’s ability to provide ECCD service is improved.

·      The communities’ participation in administrating ECCD service is enhanced.

Direct beneficiaries: at least 72,000 children from 0 to 6 years-old in ECCD centers across 24 counties.