Welcome to my site! My name is Jan van Ravens, policy advisor.
Early Childhood Development (ECD) was one of my main fields of work between 2008 and 2018. It has been a privilege and an honor to support 30 low- and middle-income countries in making the world a better place for young children. I worked partly as an independent consultant and partly as an affiliate to the Child Study Center at Yale University.
My decade in ECD was part of a longer period (between the turn of the century and the outbreak of COVID-19) of exceptionally favorable conditions for progress, with (i) high economic growth, not least in low-income countries; (ii) decreasing fertility rates; (iii) substantial reduction of poverty; (iv) accumulation of scientific and experiential knowledge about child development; (v) new insights into the returns on investments in child services, and (vi) enhanced global commitment to human development (MDGs, SDGs).
But progress fell short of expectations, according to trend analysis (see Global Reports, below) and personal observations in the 30 countries. Economic growth in developing countries expressed itself mainly in increasing attendance of unregistered preschools whereas the expansion of the formal system began to slow down in 2015 and came to a standstill in 2017. Below you can find a paper written in 2015 that predicted this and is still relevant as an explanation of what went wrong. More importantly, there is also a recent publication about a policy instrument called The Preschool Entitlement on how to restart expansion.
The trend analysis also showed that the reduction of Under-5-Mortality began to decelerate around the year 2005 especially in parts of Africa and Asia, and that this might be associated with the spread of a governance concept called integrated ECD. This hypothesis is supported by an essay on The Governance of ECD which promotes LAMP: Locally Adaptable Mono-sectoral Policies. LAMP is an occasional name for a widely applied governance concept in which it is the local level that decides how to shape and combine public services, requiring the national level to deliver policies that are distinct and locally adaptable, and to maintain quality standards through inspection.
This site is a platform for my mission in life: to promote LAMP and The Preschool Entitlement. The site also discloses a selection of my country reports. If you have any questions, my friend, please contact me at janvanravens@hotmail.com .
The following 12 country reports are directly available by clicking. They are followed by an overview of the remaining 18 countries. If you are interested in one of these 18 countries, please contact me at janvanravens@hotmail.com .
The 18 remaining countries:
Albania, Armenia, Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Laos, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan, PerĂº, Romania, Sudan, Uzbekistan.
For any questions, please contact me at janvanravens@hotmail.com.
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Jan van Ravens
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