Scaling Early Childhood Development – what to read this month | December 2025

Scaling Early Childhood Development – what to read this month is curated by Bet Caeyers (Lead Editor, Chr. Michelsen Institute), Meghan Taylor (Editor, Oxford Policy Management) and Daniel Munday (Editor, Oxford Policy Management).

This month’s newsletter is shorter than usual – it’s been a relatively quiet period for publications related to scaling early childhood development– but it still includes a couple of interesting pieces, along with several systematic reviews that will be of interest to many readers.

UNICEF and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation published a compendium of effective practices for scaling up ECD across Eastern Africa, Southern Africa and beyond. The report draws on case studies from Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It describes, how integrated ‘cash plus’ models of nurturing care services embedded in primary health care are improving child nutrition, development and school readiness at scale. The studies highlight the central role of strong multisectoral ECD policies, coordinated governance and smart financing in turning pilots into national systems.

A new randomised controlled trial in Mumbai evaluated the impact of a three-year community mobilisation intervention to address domestic violence in an urban setting. Designed to be replicable and implemented among a population of approximately 60,000 people, the programme was delivered through community participatory learning (women, men and youth groups), and a network of volunteer activists, linking survivors with caseworkers at local centres. Although the intervention strengthened local activism, reduced perceived community tolerance of violence, and improved support pathways, it did not produce a statistically significant reduction in reports of domestic violence. These findings underscore both the deeply entrenched nature of domestic violence and the difficulty of demonstrating community-wide impact, even through well-designed and intensive interventions.

To close the final newsletter of 2025, here is a quick round-up of some recent systematic reviews on early health, nutrition and learning.  A new scoping review of dyadic care interventions shows that programmes supporting mothers and infants together – by combining responsive caregiving and mental health care – offer a compelling opportunity to streamline services and improve postpartum morbidity and mortality. A separate review on multiple micronutrient supplementation from pregnancy through early childhood suggests modest sustained benefits for children’s cognition and school-age performance, however, long-term effects remain understudied. A meta-analysis of nutrition-sensitive interventions concludes that pairing cash, agriculture, water, sanitation, hygiene and behaviour-change components with nutrition-specific services tends to deliver the largest gains in diet quality and child growth. Finally, a scoping review of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) finds that, although it remains one of the most widely used tools for assessing early childhood education quality globally, it is most effective when combined with multiple assessment tools to establish a more comprehensive picture of early childhood. However, more is needed in the realm of assessing psychological wellbeing and context-adapted approaches.