IECD workshop to ease research and data presentation |28 May 2016

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) sectors met yesterday in a workshop to sharpen their research skills and facilitate tabular presentation of data when reporting numerical information.

Held under the topic ‘National Action Plan 2015-2016 Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Research Methods’, the workshop was organised by the Institute of Early Childhood Development (IECD) and the main facilitator was Egbert Benstrong.

In his presentation on survey design and managing information, Mr Benstrong focused on levels of measurement which help to decide how to interpret the data from that variable.

The National Action Plan 2015-2016 for ECCE is in the second year of implementation and is being monitored periodically. During the last monitoring visit in March 2016, it was found that most of the projects have been initiated and some of them were at a moderate stage of progress.

Moreover, in discussing progress with the different sectors, particular attention was given to performance indicators and the marshalling of information and data that would document achievements and attainment of the objectives of the project.

It was agreed there was a lack of capacity in the sectors to develop monitoring instruments, manage database information and to report on the results.

As explained by Shirley Choppy, the chief executive of IECD, they are now about to enter the plan’s evaluation stage. As part of monitoring the plan whose development was coordinated by IECD, the unit called on those various sectors and provided support like in health, social, community development and sports to name some, those who are involved with small children one way or another.

She also remarked during their visits, IECD detected certain lacking, difficulty in how these sectors research, collect and present their data, to be sent for evaluation later on. Therefore they needed support in that area.

“It is for this reason that we are holding this small workshop to build capacity to help them better deliver their information gathered,” said Mrs Choppy.

When opening the workshop and highlighting its programme outline and objectives during the implementation process, Dr Andre Leste, research specialist for IECD, said there are certain things they need to take into consideration. Based on lessons gained from the last action plan, he said they have tried to install a very robust and monitoring programme in the second evaluation progress.

This consist of a progress report which the ECCE has written for 2015; another measurated report for the high level committee and various recommendations from the national coordinated committee and visits to different sectors to find out progress.

“What needs to be done is strong evaluation, reporting, and presentation of data,” said Dr Leste.

He added during visits to different sectors he also concentrated on two things which were the outcome and performance indicators.