Project report
Effective child-focused education and nurturing care interventions
Jen Jackson, Syeda Kashfee Ahmed, Toby Carslake, Petra N. Lietz ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This report reviews 35 child-focused early childhood education and care (ECEC) interventions across 29 countries, with the largest representation from China and Bangladesh. The interventions provided learning support and nurturing care to children either in centres or at home, typically in the year or two before school entry. Twenty-seven of the 35 interventions showed positive effects on child learning. Child-focused interventions demonstrated larger positive effects compared with other types of ECEC interventions examined in the broader review.
Key points
- 35 child-focused interventions studied across 29 countries in five regions
- China (5 studies) and Bangladesh (4 studies) were most frequently represented; Indonesia and Ethiopia each had 3 interventions
- Interventions targeted preschool children (20 studies), younger children (11 studies), and disadvantaged children (4 studies)
- 27 of 35 interventions (77%) had positive effects on learning outcomes
- Child-focused interventions showed the largest effects compared with other ECEC intervention types
Limitations
The report excerpt does not provide details on the specific learning outcomes measured, the magnitude of effects, or which intervention features were associated with positive results. The evidence base reflects only published studies and may not capture interventions tested in all settings or populations.
Abstract
Child-focused education and nurturing care interventions provide learning support directly to the child. In line with the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED Level 0), the support is typically provided by either centre- or home-based Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services outside the child’s family and includes an educative and caring component with an active child development element. The 35 child-focused interventions in this review (of a total of 109 studies; see further details under background) occurred in 29 countries in five regions – the widest geographical spread of all intervention types under consideration. The most frequently represented countries were China (five studies) and Bangladesh (four studies) while three interventions occurred in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The child-focused interventions targeted three groups, namely preschool for children in the one or two years before starting school (20 studies), programs for younger children and programs without an explicit educational focus (11 studies) and short-term interventions for disadvantaged children (4 studies). Twenty-seven of the 35 interventions had positive effects on learning. The impact of these interventions – one of six types of interventions in the review – confirmed previous results showing the largest effects for child focused interventions compared with other ECEC interventions (Rao et al., 2017).
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Child-focused early childhood education and care (ECEC) interventions providing direct learning support and nurturing care through centre- or home-based services
- Population
- Children in the year or two before school entry, younger children, and disadvantaged children across 29 countries
Key finding
27 of 35 child-focused interventions (77%) had positive effects on learning