Scaling-up Early Learning in Ethiopia: Exploring the Potential of O-Class
O-Class are pre-primary classes within primary schools
Abstract
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.2 identifies 鈥榩re-primary education鈥� as a strategy to strengthen school readiness and contribute to the quality and outcomes of education, which is supported by the powerful evidence from evaluation research. The challenge faced by many countries is to deliver the proven potential of well-planned, quality programmes to scale.
This working paper summarises Ethiopia鈥檚 growing commitment to pre-primary education and reports recent Young Lives engagement with the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia and other partners to support scale-up. Ethiopia鈥檚 most recent ambitious targets for early learning have been set out in the Fifth Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP V 2015), with pre-primary classes (known as O-Class) within primary schools being seen as the most rapid route to scale-up.
Young Lives is an international study of childhood poverty, following the lives of 12,000 children in 4 countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam) over 15 years. Young Lives is funded by the UK Department for International Development
Citation
Woodhead, Martin, Jack Rossiter, Alula Pankhurst, Andrew Dawes (2016) Scaling-up Early Learning in Ethiopia: Exploring the Potential of O-Class, Young Lives Working Paper 163. Oxford: Young Lives