2017 – The Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) initiative began in 2014 in anticipation of this new global emphasis on early childhood development (ECD). Led by UNESCO, the World Bank, the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and UNICEF, the initiative aims to promote feasible, accurate and useful measurement of children’s development and learning at the start of primary school, and of the quality of their pre-primary learning environments. Items are designed for children between the ages of 4 and 6 years. Following the premise that many existing tools include similar items, the leading organizations’ core team worked with a consortium of experts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilaterals to build upon current measurement tools to create a common set of items organized into modules for measuring: 1) early childhood development and learning, and 2) the quality of pre-primary learning environments. The MELQO core team and experts also collaborated to outline a process for context-specific adaptation of the measurement modules resulting from lessons learned from field-testing in several countries in 2015 and 2016.
This report published by UNESCO is intended as an overview of the MELQO initiative, outlining the overall purpose of the effort, the module development process and rationale, and the content of the modules themselves – MODEL, focused on measuring child development and learning, and MELE, focused on measuring early learning environments.