Measuring Early Child Development in Scotland: Introducing the Early Development Instrument

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Measuring Early Child Development in Scotland
Introducing the Early Development Instrument

• Dr Rosemary Geddes
• Career Development Fellow, MRC Human Genetics
  Unit, Scottish Collaboration for Public Health
  Research and Policy
• Professor John Frank
• Director, Scottish Collaboration for Public
  Health Research and Policy
• Professor and Chair, Public Health Research and
  Policy, University of Edinburgh

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Todays presentation

• Early child development
• Health inequalities
• Measuring child development
• Early Development Instrument
• Tool for community change
• How other countries do this
• Our project
• Timescales and steps involved

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EARLY YEARS MATTER
They set the stage for further development
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Sensitive periods in early brain development
Pre-school years
School years
High
Numbers
Peer social skills
Conceptualization
Sensitivity
Language
Habitual ways of responding
Emotional control
Vision
Hearing
Low
1
2
3
7
6
5
4
0
Years
Graph developed by Council for Early Child
Development (ref Nash, 1997 Early Years Study,
1999 Shonkoff, 2000.)
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What determines early child development?

• Genetics
• Environmental factors the world around
• Breastfeeding
• Sensitive nurturing
• Reading and activities
• Healthy diet
• Being treated with care and respect by those
  around you
• Good parental role models

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Life Course Problems Related to Early Life
2nd Decade
3rd/4th Decade
5th/6th Decade
Old Age

• School Failure
• Teen Pregnancy
• Criminality

• Obesity
• Elevated Blood
• Pressure
• Depression
• Addictions

• Coronary Heart
• Disease
• Diabetes

• Premature
• Aging
• Memory Loss

Source Clyde Hertzman, Early Child Development
A powerful equalizer.
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Health inequalities in Scotland
Outcome Outcome Outcome Most deprived Least deprived
Smoking during pregnancy¹ Smoking during pregnancy¹ Smoking during pregnancy¹ 38 13
Stillbirth Stillbirth Stillbirth 5.9/1000 live births 3.8/1000 live births
46 m Language development concerns² Language development concerns² 26 12
46 m Behaviour to other children Behaviour to other children 24 10
46 m Total difficulties (on SDQ) Total difficulties (on SDQ) 20 7
Dental caries age 5 years³ (odds) Dental caries age 5 years³ (odds) Dental caries age 5 years³ (odds) 4.6 1
Teenage pregnancy4 Teenage pregnancy4 Teenage pregnancy4 3 x higher
Death in 15-44 year olds5 Death in 15-44 year olds5 Death in 15-44 year olds5 5 x higher
45-74 year olds 45-74 year olds Death due to CHD 3.8 x more likely
45-74 year olds 45-74 year olds Death due to cancer 2.3 x more likely
45-74 year olds 45-74 year olds Alcohol deaths 12.3 x more likely
Under-75 year old deaths Under-75 year old deaths Under-75 year old deaths 3.6 x more likely
Sources 1. Gray R, Bonellie SR, Chalmers J,
Greer I, Jarvis S, Kurinczuk JJ, et al. 2009. 2.
Scottish Government. Growing Up in Scotland
Health inequalities in the early years. 2010. 3.
Levin KA, Davies CA, Topping GV, Assaf AV, Pitts
NB. 2009. 4. Scottish Government 2003. 5.
Scottish Government Health Analytical Services
Division 2008.
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In Scotland babies born into these circumstances
live, on average, 12 years less than
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babies born into these circumstances.
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Measuring child development

• No standardized way of measuring child
  development
• Health Visitor 6-8 weeks, next stop is school
• School measures - height, weight, vision
• No idea if children are ready for school
• No idea if the 0-5 year old environments are
  providing children with the support and
  stimulation they need to be ready for school

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What is the EDI?

• The EDI is teacher-completed (20 minutes)
  checklist that assesses childrens readiness to
  learn when they enter school.
• It measures the outcomes of childrens pre-school
  (0-5 years) experiences as they influence their
  readiness to learn at school.
• As a result, the EDI is able to predict how
  children will do in primary school.
• The EDI does not report information about
  individual childrens development, rather groups
  of children.

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What Does the EDI Measure?
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1) Physical Health and Well-Being
Physical readiness for school day - e.g.,
arriving to school hungry Physical
independence - e.g., having well-coordinated
movements Gross and fine motor skills - e.g.,
being able to manipulate objects
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turity
2) Social Competence
Overall social competence - e.g., ability to get
along with other children Responsibility and
respect - e.g., accept responsibility for
actions Approaches to learning - e.g., working
independently Readiness to explore new things -
e.g., eager to explore new items
3) Emotional Maturity
3) Emotional Maturity
Pro-social and helping behaviour - e.g., helps
other children in distress Anxious and fearful
behaviour - e.g., appears unhappy or
sad Aggressive behaviour - e.g., gets into
physical fights Hyperactivity and inattention -
e.g., is restless
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4) Language Cognitive Development

• Basic literacy
• - e.g., able to write own name
• Interest in literacy/numeracy and memory
• - e.g., interested in games involving numbers
• Advanced literacy
• - e.g., able to read sentences
• Basic numeracy
• - e.g., able to count to 20

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5) Communication Skills and General Knowledge
(No subdomains) - Ability to clearly communicate
ones own needs and understand others - Clear
articulation - Active participation in
story-telling (not necessarily with good grammar
and syntax) - Interest in general knowledge about
the world
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Purposes of the EDI

• Tells us what of children are vulnerable in
  our communities and in which development areas
• Provides picture of what early learning looks
  like at the community level
• Reports on populations of children in different
  communities over time
• Identifies strengths and where the needs are
  greatest
• One predictor of how children will do in primary
  school
• Identifies gaps in programmes and services

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Benefits of EDI

• paints a picture - EDI results yield
  neighbourhood profiles of early childhood for
  every community in the district
• building more bridges agencies that serve
  infants, toddlers preschoolers have an
  opportunity to plan and enhance their services
  including parenting programmes
• planning assists principals, schools and school
  boards to look forward to adjust school
  programmes to meet the needs of incoming
  students
• takes a village emphasizes the role of the
  community before the child reaches school
• teachers tell us doing the EDI helps focus
  their thoughts for report card writing,
  parent/teacher meetings and programme planning
• Look forward adjust school programmes to meet
  the current needs of incoming students (schools).
• Look backward adjust early childhood programmes
  to help ensure children are ready to learn and
  make it easier for them to make the transition to
  school (community).

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In terms of what we can influence
Early experiences
Success in school
Developmental outcomes
EDI results
Predict
Inform
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Example of community action from down under
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Asset Mapping Perth East Metropolitan region,
Proportion of children vulnerable on one or more
domains
Prepared by AEDI National Support Centre Source
AEDI Communities Data 2004/05
East Metropolitan Perth, WA
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The AEDI community planning process
2. Assessing the local distribution of
childrens developmental vulnerability
1. Identifying areas of particular need
e.g. Mission Australia funds 3 year play group,
language program mums group at school
3. Community asset mapping
4. Mobilising community action
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WHO IS USING IT?
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Conclusion

• EDI provides communities with the opportunity to
  better understand how they can allocate resources
  concentrate their efforts to work towards
  improving outcomes for children.
• EDI is inexpensive has been well-validated and
  used internationally with success
• EDI covers more domains of child development than
  most other similar instruments
• This joined-up standardized holistic
  measurement of child outcomes provides an
  opportunity for information sharing and
  subsequent planning by all stakeholders in a
  local authority

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EDI pilot project East Lothian

• Preschool nursery schools
• Assess children at end of nursery
• Phase 1 smaller group of 20 teachers assessing
  220 children test the Canadian-EDI for
  language, content, user-friendliness
• Adapt Canadian-EDI to a Scottish-EDI
• Phase 2 larger pilot which assesses all
  (approximately 1000) preschool nursery children
  in the year before P1

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Logistics

• Timelines

• Stakeholders

• Phase 1 Dec 2010 to March 2011
• Phase 2 June 2011
• Reporting back to stakeholders October 2011

• Community leaders
• Parent representatives
• Local authority leaders
• Preschool and school representatives
• Education authorities
• Health authorities
• Voluntary organisations operating in East Lothian