Before Grade One: Building Early Learning Systems That Last
Most conversations about education start at Grade One. This one starts earlier, when children first enter a classroom and the cognitive, linguistic, and social foundations that shape their future learning are being laid.
What would change if early learning were treated not as an optional precursor to “real” education, but as essential infrastructure for human development?
This session brings together four organizations already working on this challenge in East Africa — and beyond.
Our starting question is practical: what does it actually take to build early learning systems that outlast the program, the grant, and the implementer who started them?
The conversation will explore three parts of the system that are often addressed separately: the teachers and caregivers delivering early learning; the evidence and feedback loops that show whether approaches are working; and the local publishing and content industries producing the materials schools actually use.
That raises difficult choices for governments, funders, and practitioners:
*How can we sustain teacher coaching and motivation?
*How can play-based learning and mother tongue instruction become part of national systems rather than parallel programs?
*What kinds of data actually change classroom practice?
*Why should locally produced, culturally relevant learning materials be understood as a capability worth investing in?
Our aim is to co-develop with the event attendees what permanence requires: the policy, financing, institutional capacity, evidence, local ownership, and coordination needed to make quality early learning part of the system itself.
What to expect
An honest, unscripted working conversation drawing on experience across early childhood development, teacher development, multilingual publishing, and education research.
The four collaborating organizations will bring different parts of the early learning system into dialogue, using their work in East Africa and other contexts as a practical starting point.
Participants will be invited into the discussion to examine what makes promising approaches endure, where systems break down, and how funders, governments, researchers, and practitioners can strengthen early learning without creating structures that disappear when a program ends.
Who this is for
This session is for education and early childhood funders, government leaders, researchers, practitioners, publishers, social entrepreneurs, and development leaders interested in building early learning systems that strengthen human capability and endure beyond individual grants and programs.
What you will get out of it
A systems-level view of why pre-primary education matters for longer-term learning and development
Practical insights into sustaining teacher capacity, coaching, motivation, and play-based learning
Perspectives on mother tongue instruction and the role of local publishing ecosystems in sustainable early learning
Lessons on building evidence and feedback loops that actually change classroom practice
A deeper understanding of the financing, policy, and institutional conditions required to move from successful pilots to durable national systems
Featuring
Dr. Natnael Asres Yamnew, Director of Program & Strategic Partnerships, African Center for Early Childhood Development
Mara Lee Durrell, Executive Director, Rise Alliance for Children
Dr. David Johnson, Reader in Comparative & International Education, University of Oxford
Camille Park, CEO, NABU