USAID INCLUSIVE PRE-PRIMARY EDUCATION QUARTERLY PROGRESS UPDATE

The Activity is being implemented by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) and other stakeholders. During the reporting period, UNICEF conducted a series of awareness meetings with policy and decision-makers at the central and subnational levels to present the objectives of the Activity and seek support from the MoES for its implementation. The introduction of the Activity was welcomed by the line Ministries, who reaffirmed their common understanding and commitment to the project. The Activity was officially launched in Khatlon Region in December 2023, with the participation of His Excellency Manuel Micaller Jr., Ambassador of the United States of America to the Republic of Tajikistan, and other high-level officials. The launch event included a joint visit to an ECE Center in Jaloliddini Balkhi, followed by interaction with children, parents, and teachers. UNICEF has set up an internal cross-sectoral team to implement the Activity, comprising nine technical staff with expertise in areas such as learning, partnership, child protection, early childhood development, and monitoring and evaluation. The team has engaged in the implementation of the Activity, including the development of the Year 1 work plan and Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Plan. The Activity aims to understand the landscape of pre-primary education in Tajikistan, with a focus on describing and analyzing the pre-primary context in target districts. To achieve this objective, UNICEF has started to lay the foundation for an effective and timely start-up of Year 1, by identifying and developing the most effective PPE landscape analysis methodologies. UNICEF has conducted a thorough review of existing internationally accepted PPE analysis methodologies, including the World Bank's landscape analysis for their ongoing ECD project in Tajikistan and the diagnostic tools of the ECE Accelerator Toolkit. The organization has also explored supplementary findings from the Listening to Tajikistan baseline assessment to feed into a comprehensive analysis of ECE needs and gaps in target locations. The Activity will conduct a baseline school readiness outcome measurement as part of the measurement framework of quality PPE in Tajikistan. To measure school readiness, UNICEF is exploring the use of an adapted version of the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) tool developed by Save the Children International. UNICEF is also in the process of recruiting a national research coordinator with M&E/PPE expertise in mixed methods research to coordinate the different studies/surveys planned within the framework of the Activity during Year 1. The organization is exploring external expertise to start data collection during Q2 in 2024 and will set up a Steering Committee to guide and advise on the Activity rollout and necessary contextualization of the interventions based on findings of the analysis.