Evaluation of the National Early Childhood Development Programme 2004 – 2015

Early Childhood Development (ECD) as considered as a child being physically healthy, mentally alert, emotionally sound, socially competent and ready to learn. It also includes a child’s moral and spiritual development. ECD comprehensively covers the period from conception to age 8. It is a multisectoral process aimed at promoting a child’s health, nutrition, cognitive development, social development, and protection.

According to recent Lancet Series published in October 2016[1], multi-sectoral interventions, with health services as an entry point, are particularly well-placed to reach children early with services that support families to deliver nurturing care, promote, protect, and support early childhood development. Interventions to promote nurturing care can feasibly build on existing health and nutrition services at only a limited additional cost. Coordination with education is needed to promote learning, and with social and child protection, to reach the most vulnerable populations.

Several data sources indicates that children of Nepal have not reached their full potential. MICS 2014 Early Childhood Development Index, showed that only 64.4 percent of children age 36-59 months are developmentally on track in at least three of the four domains of literacy-numeracy, physical, social-emotional, and learning. The disparity between regions and districts varies with at least 19 districts having a low score (Fig 1). 

In 2014, the under 5 mortality rate was 38 deaths per 1000 live births[2]. In the same year, the stunting and wasting rate was reported at 37.4 and 11.3 percent respectively among children under-five years (MICS 2014). The prevalence of anemia among children 6-23 months was 69 percent in 2011 (DHS 2011).  On the whole, it is estimated that there has been almost no change in neonatal mortality over the past five years; vaccine-preventable diseases remain a threat for a small but persistently unreached population; key childhood diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhea remain a threat to the most disadvantaged populations where care-seeking practices, community and facility-based care and treatment are inadequate.

A good number of children in Nepal are at risk of child labour, child marriage or are exposed to violence, abuse and harmful traditional practices. The most critical gap is the lack of a coherent and integrated system for protection and response. MICS (2014), stated that 81.7 percent of children aged 1 to 14 years have experienced some kind of violent discipline in a month

Early childhood education is attended by 50.7 percent of children of age 36-59 months[3]and  only 4.8 percent under age 5 have three or more children’s book. Nepali Children in early childhood lack appropriate stimulation and education.

Nepal has been promoting and expanding ECD services since the 1950s because of its importance as well as need with sectoral driven programmes in health, nutrition, protection and education for ECD. Nevertheless, the early childhood development concept still focuses more on education (ECD centers) as evidenced by several government documents on ECD. 

In 2004, an early childhood development strategy paper was developed by Ministry of Education with elaborate plans/ strategies to expand ECD centres (pre-primary education)[4]. The paper places emphasis on ensuring coordination among ECD stakeholders, and tries to create synergies in the planning, management and operational aspects of the ECD program. The objectives of the strategy paper were: (1) to present a clear concept, definition and vision of early childhood development in the context of Nepal; (2) to prepare a functional policy environment for bringing all the early childhood development actors into a coordinated framework; (3) to create an atmosphere for optimal use of expertise, resources and institutional capacity of the Government and all potential partners for expanding early childhood development with a focus on disadvantaged and vulnerable communities.

The ECD strategy paper’s main focus has been on Early Childhood Education with efforts towards making it more holistic by integrating aspects of health and nutrition. The focus on ECD centres has been national and it can be confirmed that after the development of the paper, there has been significant growth of ECD centres throughout the country (Figure 2). Though the ECD mostly focused on ECE, other sectors supported the centres with interventions such as mid-day meals for kids in schools for nutrition as well as ENT checkups and growth monitoring for health.  

Figure 2: Number of ECD Centres in Nepal in 2015

Source: Department of Education, Flash report 2003/2004-2015/2016

Even though 81% of children have access to Early Childhood Education (ECE) through these centres, unfortunately 19% of children do not have access to ECE because they live in remote areas or are children with disability (DOE 2015/16). Girls and boys have almost the same access to ECE centres. Despite the increasing number of centres, the quality of some ECD centres are questionable. Plus, there are number of challenges regarding equity and inclusion. It is understood that gender disparities in Nepal begins early childhood and is present throughout the girl’s life especially in rural communities.

A holistic development approach has not grown during the course of expansion due to weak coordination between the concerned line ministries[5]. In the past, several efforts were to enhance coordination between sectors involved in ECD at the national level. In 2004 for example, the Department of Education, Ministry of Education formed “Nepal ECD Network” at the government level.The network was comprised of officials from the Department of Education and other organizations as ex-officio members and some professionals as members. It met a few times and provided technical support to the Department of Education at various times, especially in developing ECD curriculum guides, training programs and in framing early childhood education plans. Unfortunately, the network is no longer functional and does not legally exist.

Also, an ‘ECD council’ was formed to better coordinate the implementation and policy of ECD per the 2004 ECD guidelines. This council was made up of high level officials from different ministries which has ECD related programmes, namely the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, the Ministry of Finance amongst others. Given that these were high ranking officials coupled with the hierarchy within ministries regular meeting were difficult to address issues or provide strategic guidance.

The “ECD Caucus” made up of members of the Constituent Assembly/legislative parliament and comprised mostly of members of parliament and some technical experts, played a big role in advocating ECD at the higher political level. Their advocacy led to the incorporation of ECD as one of the fundamental rights of every child in the new Constitution of Nepal promulgated in 2015. However, as the Caucus is virtually limited to parliamentarians it has its own strengths and limitations. The ECD caucus, pushed for an ‘ECD steering committee” under the Chair of the Vice Chairman of the National Planning Commission to enhance coordination was formed in 2014 but has met only once.

The evaluation of UNICEF ECD programme[6] highlighted that when an ECD policy is developed primarily in one sector, inter-sectoral collaboration becomes more challenging including policy mandate to implement ECD within policy documents for a single sector which is the case of Nepal. In addition, when the policy is in a single sector, it creates challenges in providing ECD services across age span and for multiple settings such as home and school.

Early Childhood Development has been recognized in Nepal as a basic right given the mounting amount of empirical evidence demonstrating the value of ECD. The evaluation aims at: (i) identifying possible ways of enhancing coordination amongst key ministries; (ii) demonstrating the linkages between Early Childhood Education and other sectoral interventions of ECD and (iii) identify the gaps between policy and implementation.

The evaluation will contribute in providing strategic guidance during the elaboration of the new ECD strategy (2017 – 2030). Findings and recommendations will support the government in policy making and national and sub national planning.

Audience

The main audience of the evaluation will be the National Planning Commission; Ministry and Department of Education; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare; ECD council, ECD network, ECD caucus, UN agencies; Development partners, I/NGOs and other stakeholders in ECD.

At a global level, the evaluation will contribute toward strengthening knowledge management on Early Childhood Development programmes

The overarching objectives of the evaluation are to:

• Reconstruct a theory of change for the ECD Strategy 2004 - 2015
• Assess the existing services available for ECD across the sector
• Assess how the ECD strategy (2004 – 2015) was integrated in key sectoral strategy/policy documents, programmes and budgets.
• Assess the implementation linkages with key ministries in Nepal especially the Ministry of Education; Health; Federal Affairs and Local Development; and Women, Children and Social Welfare in implementing ECD programmes at national and sub national levels.  
• Assess the extent to which the interim outcomes/results of the ECD strategy were achieved.

Scope:

The evaluation will cover the period 2004 – 2015 of the ECD Strategy as the reference document available. However, it will not limit to the ECD strategy developed by Ministry of Education but will also confirm with alignment with other sectoral plans and policies related with ECD. The evaluation will take a summative approach and should bring out best practices; gaps with the ECD programmes, budgets and between different sectoral ECD programme in different key ministries. It should identify direct or indirect, intended or unintended effects of the programme and propose recommendations that will inform the new national ECD strategy and programmes, as well as support national and subnational planning and policy making. The evaluation will assess the intermediate or medium term results of the ECD Strategy. The evaluation should review the sectoral ECD implementation strategies. Additionally, it shall map out all forms of ECD services provided by relevant ministries and assess the functioning and effectiveness of existing coordination mechanism.

The evaluation would cover all target groups of the strategy and will include particularly children in their early childhood, caregivers, ECD center facilitators, management committee and other local bodies and local level offices of line agencies.

Geographically, the evaluation will cover all three ecological zones and at least one district from each province (total 7) will be agreed upon by the ECD evaluation technical committee.

The evaluation will be process-focused and will be guided and informed by the evaluation strategy and other relevant documents. The evaluation is not expected to assess attributable impact of the interventions on the lives of beneficiaries but will draw on secondary data to assess outcomes.  The evaluation should include gender, human rights and equity dimensions. The evaluation will take place between May 2017 and December 30, 2017.

Evaluation Questions

The overarching questions of the evaluation are:

• How successful was the implementation of the current national ECD programme in line with the national ECD vison?
• How efficient were the sectoral resources allocated to ECD in meeting the national and subnational needs?
• How were the implementation of ECD programmes and achievements perceived by key stakeholders in the intervention districts
• What learning can be drawn to inform the new ECD strategy development and implementation?

Specifically, and following the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) criteria for evaluations. The evaluation will have an additional criteria related to gender and equity. The evaluation should address the following questions:

Relevance:

• How have sector programmes met the ECD needs in the regions (now provinces)? How were key sector outputs linked to the key ECD strategy outputs?
• How was the ECD strategy developed? Was the ECD strategy relevant in itself?

Effectiveness:

• How has the ECD strategy been reflected in key sectoral strategies and/or policies, sectoral programmes, planning documents and activities? What were the gaps?
• What were the gaps in the coordination amongst key Ministries and Departments at the central and local level supportive in holistically delivering ECD services? What model can best support a stronger collaboration and coordination?
• To what extent were local bodies and other local actors involved in the planning and management of ECD services?
• How were the sector ECD implementation strategies effective in contributing to the overall outcome of the strategy and/or sectoral ECD programmes?

Efficiency:

• How much of key sector programme budgets were allocated and spent on ECD activities?
• What is the cost effectiveness of community based and school based intervention approaches (compare per unit cost which should include government and other sources of funding such as corporate social funding)?
• How was the financial progress tracked and monitored to improve on programme management?

Interim Outcomes[7]

• What immediate results were achieved by ECD sectors during the period 2004 – 2015?
• What were the unintended, positive or negative effects of the programme?
• What was the annual performance of the ECD programmes with respect to annual targets and achievements?

Sustainability:

• What were the different sectoral ECD services provided and how sustainable are these services in the communities (this includes mapping of ECD services and the quality of the different services)?
• What is the sustainability of ECD services in the communities once development partners or other funding support phases out?
• How can the design and implementation of the new ECD strategy contribute in achieving the Sustainable development goals of Nepal?

Gender and Equity

• How equitable is access to ECD services for the most vulnerable (male and female), excluded (M/F) and marginalised children (boys and girls) such as children in remote areas, migrants, children from ethnic minority groups, children living in institutions, among others?
• How has gender equality been incorporated in the sector ECD programmes (from the design to the implementation including targeting)? Were the sector programmes guided by international conventions such as the convention on the rights of the child (CRC, 1989) and convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW, 1979)?