Author: Nelson Rosario

Something changes when a teen leaves an Oxford summer program with an MIT certificate for the first time. Not in a dramatic way—there’s no ceremony or podium moment worth taking pictures of. But in the background, something has been set up. A certificate. An alert. A sneak peek at the kind of thing that parents in Mumbai, São Paulo, and Seoul will be spending a lot of money on in just a few years. That’s pretty much what the new partnership between Oxford Royale Academy and MIT’s RAISE initiative sets in motion. Secondary school students at Oxford Royale’s programs will…

You get a certain kind of tiredness when you don’t know where you’ll sleep next week. It sounds like stress to most adults. It doesn’t feel like worry to a two-year-old; it feels like noise in the nervous system. Constant, low-level, unnoticeable noise that gets in the way of becoming a person. Every year, more than 2.5 million children in the United States are homeless or have very unstable housing. They are mostly kids younger than six. These aren’t just numbers; they show the years when a child’s brain grows faster than it ever will again, and when safety and…

The nurseries and pre-schools in Britain are slowly becoming emergency rooms. It’s not often on the front page. It doesn’t come with sirens. But right now, if you go into almost any early years setting in England, you can feel it. The over-stretched schedules, tired faces, and empty desks where coworkers used to sit show it. The people who take care of the youngest kids in the country are leaving. And they’re not going to be changed. The Early Education and Childcare Coalition and the University of Leeds have done new research that backs up what many people in the…

In most stories about city reform, there’s a point where the one person who made it all happen emerges. This could be a charismatic mayor, a visionary minister, or a well-funded NGO. The story of how Addis Ababa changed how it helps young children grow and learn isn’t quite that simple. It began with two learning trips, which were a bit of a surprise. When top city officials returned from trips to Denmark and Brazil, they brought back something harder to measure than a policy memo: a real change in how they thought about what a city owed its youngest…

There is something quietly unsettling about sitting in a conference hall in Bangkok listening to early childhood experts describe the state of the world. Not because what they are saying is radical — but because it isn’t. It’s logical, careful, evidence-based. And somehow, most governments still aren’t listening. In July 2024, the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education, known as OMEP, held its 76th World Assembly and International Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Nearly 400 participants from across the globe gathered under one theme: Right from the Start for ECCE: Step Beyond All Together. The message running beneath every keynote, every…

There is a big number that keeps coming up in the field of education research. It stops people in the middle of their sentences. 17.8 quadrillion dollars. As a direct result of COVID-19 school closings, this generation of kids is expected to lose that much in living wages over the course of their lives. It’s not just a guess made out of thin air. It comes from a report that the World Bank, UNESCO, and UNICEF put together together. It is a lot worse than the $10 trillion estimate that those same groups made in 2020. The space between those…

For some reason, OMEP Aotearoa’s website seems to be trying to be understated. The kind of site that looks like it was quickly put together on a Sunday afternoon by someone who cared more about the cause than the look. In all honesty, that does work. Because the World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP) has never been about how things look. It’s been about kids. It’s about making sure that the rights of the youngest and weakest people in society are respected and not just used as talking points. In the same way, the New Zealand chapter works. It…

There is a certain kind of weariness that parents of kids with special needs feel. But it’s not the tiredness that comes from having a tough week or meeting. It builds on itself. It happens slowly, one unanswered email at a time, one review meeting where nothing changes, and one year where a child falls further behind while adults talk carefully and without committing to anything. When parents see that the system isn’t working for their child, they usually know it. The fact that this is not an isolated event is harder to accept. For far too many families, it…

When you go to most early childhood centers on a Tuesday morning, it’s calm chaos in the best way possible. Little kids were yanking on shoelaces and preschoolers were arguing over a block. In the background, an adult was kneeling at eye level and keeping everything together. Often, you won’t see what takes place after work. The boss was in the back office by himself, looking at a staffing spreadsheet. At 10 p.m., the assistant director was answering emails from parents. The person in charge of the program who hasn’t had a real lunch break in three weeks. Burnout in…

There is a certain kind of anger that builds up over time. It doesn’t come with a press conference or a protest. It comes out in a complaint letter, at a school board meeting, or when a child is quietly pulled out of a classroom. Of course, this is how many California families feel, and school districts like San Jose Unified School District are right in the middle of it. San Jose Unified is one of the bigger urban districts in the Bay Area. It serves tens of thousands of students in a city that is both one of the…