Scaling Early Childhood Development – what to read this month | November 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).

In this issue, we start with spotlighting three new studies that have the potential to support governments make progress on ECD when budgets are tight and organisational resources are stretched. Kicking us off, Bhandari et al. provide the first population-level estimates of how scaling exclusive breastfeeding could generate long-term, intergenerational health gains across 132 low- and middle-income countries. Drawing on high-quality meta-analyses and global data, the study finds that achieving 90% coverage could delay about 72,300 non-communicable diseases (NCD) deaths annually and avert 10 million diabetes cases and 3.8 million hypertension cases across mothers’ and their children’s lifetimes. These findings strengthen the investment case for breastfeeding as a core ECD intervention by showing that early-life nutrition support yields substantial preventive health returns decades later – particularly in settings with low breastfeeding rates and rising NCD burdens – and by underscoring that integrated, system-level breastfeeding support delivered through health, community and policy platforms is both effective and scalable.

Saraswat et al. report results from a large trial in Nepal testing three models for delivering a teacher-led ECD programme that combines classroom quality improvements with parental engagement. After 15 days of training, schools had teachers either deliver parent sessions alone or with an in-class helper, or delegate them to external facilitators. Teacher-led delivery produced the largest gains in child development (0.2 standard deviation) and meaningful improvements in caregiver practices, while adding an in-class helper generated balanced gains across classrooms, children and parents. Delegating parent engagement to facilitators weakened child outcomes despite reducing teacher workload. The study underscores that scaling early childhood education services requires keeping teachers central while providing targeted workload relief – not substituting their role.

On social protection, a recent briefing note by Leight and Gentilini reviews two decades of evidence on how different transfer modalities perform across countries and what this means for ECD social protection systems. They show no consistent advantage of cash, food or vouchers for improving food security or nutrition across countries. For scaling ECD, the main implication is that cash – being far cheaper to deliver and more flexible for households – often offers the strongest cost-effectiveness case when markets function. Since impacts on nutrition are similar across modalities, the authors argue that selection should be driven by market capacity, cost and programme objectives, not assumptions about misuse. Hybrid cash/in-kind models are increasingly common and may fit diverse ECD contexts. The brief also highlights tools (e.g. MIFIRA, MFI) that help determine when markets can support cash delivery versus when in-kind transfers are needed – key for adapting transfer designs within integrated ECD systems.

Let’s switch now to a study by Jeon et al., which presents a novel ecological model that reframes how we understand and support the ECD workforce. Drawing on an AI-assisted systematic review of 345 studies, the authors propose a holistic framework (Figure 1) that recognises workforce wellbeing as shaped not just by individual factors but also by the dynamic interplay of relational, workplace and broader system-level influences. The review also highlights that most existing research still focuses narrowly on stress, burnout and job satisfaction as dimensions of educator wellbeing, with far less attention to physical health, health behaviours, or positive aspects of wellbeing such as resilience and self-efficacy. This evidence underscores a critical lesson for scaling: sustainable, high-quality early childhood education systems require strategies and programmes that adopt a holistic approach to workforce wellbeing – addressing the multiple layers that enable educators to remain in their roles and deliver consistent, high-quality early childhood education practices.



Figure 1: Conceptual framework on holistic educator wellbeing. Source: Jeon et al. (2025)

Barman et al. review how local gender-specific community knowledge is incorporated into public health programmes and find very few cases where such insights are meaningfully institutionalised at national level. Successful examples – often led by local organisations, community health workers or influential community leaders – show that community knowledge can shape policy when governments actively collaborate and adapt interventions to local cultural and gender dynamics. However, these remain exceptions. The core message is clear: inclusive scaling requires political will and intentional structures to embed gender-sensitive community knowledge into programme design, ensuring public health services are culturally grounded, widely accepted and effective at scale.

Sticking with the theme of gender for our conclusion, Kohli et al. present a cross-programme theory of change synthesising two evidence-backed fatherhood interventions – REAL Fathers in Uganda and Bandebereho in Rwanda – to identify the core components that reduce violence against women and children (VAWC). Both programmes effectively engaged fathers in critical reflection on gender norms, placed women’s perspectives at the centre of programme design, fostered community ownership through locally rooted mentorship structures, and embedded delivery within existing systems to enable scale. Each promotes positive masculinities and seeks to interrupt intergenerational violence through improved parenting, more equitable couple relationships and supportive social norms. By distilling these shared principles and pathways of change, the paper offers an empirically grounded framework to guide the design, adaptation and scaling of gender-transformative fatherhood programmes for sustainable ECD and VAWC-prevention impact.

2026 global ECD events calendar

A curated list of high-potential gatherings for early childhood development in low- and middle-income countries.

CIES 2026 (Comparative & Int. Education Society, San Francisco, USA | March 28 – April 1
Research: The premier venue for rigorous academic papers on education in the Global South.
World Forum on Early Care and Education, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | April 14 – 17
Practice: The largest global gathering of ECD practitioners, with strong LMIC representation.
 Education World Forum (EWF), London, UK | May 17 – 20
Policy: The world’s largest gathering of education ministers (Invitation only).
 ZERO TO THREE LEARN Conference, Portland, USA | October 27 – 29
Development: Focused heavily on the 0–3 age range and infant mental health.
 AfECN International Conference, Africa (Location TBC) | TBC
Network: The African Early Childhood Network holds major summits biennially; watch for updates.