A four-year-old is sitting through her first structured lesson in a classroom somewhere on the outskirts of Marrakech. The classroom is small, likely underfunded by Western standards, and the walls have just been painted in the upbeat colors that teachers always seem to choose. In 2018, she would not have been present. She most likely wouldn’t have been, according to statistics. Less than half of Morocco’s four to six-year-old children attended preschool at the time. You can learn everything about the origins of the nation from that number. It was chosen for OMEP’s 2027 World Conference on Early Childhood Education…
Author: Nelson Rosario
Nelson Rosario
Nelson Rosario is an Editor at worldomep.org and a law school student who has found, somewhere in the intersection of legal theory and human development, a cause worth building a career around: ensuring that every child has access to quality education and the healthcare they need to thrive. Nelson approaches child advocacy with the analytical precision of a person who has been taught to analyze systems, spot flaws, and make the case for change. His knowledge of how policies are made, where they fall short, and what it would take to hold institutions accountable for the children they are meant to serve has improved as a result of his legal education. His support, however, goes beyond academics. It stems from a sincere belief that early childhood health and education are not being adequately addressed by the legal and social frameworks in many places. Nelson adds a legal and policy perspective to discussions about child welfare through his contributions to worldomep.org, asking not only what ought to be done but also what can be required, safeguarded, and upheld.
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A certain type of publication doesn’t make a big deal out of it. It doesn’t send press packets to education desks or run advertising campaigns. It just quietly and steadily publishes, and eventually the most vulnerable people discover it. The Theory Into Practice journal published by OMEP is beginning to resemble that type of publication, one that arrives without fanfare and remains unapologetic. The OMEP Executive Committee decided that there was a gap in the global discourse on early childhood education, which led to the creation of the journal in June 2017. not absent in the manner that necessitates press…
Tracing a line from Prague in 1948 to Rabat in 2027 has an almost cinematic quality. One organization is subtly bridging the gap between two cities, two eras, and nearly eight decades apart. The early childhood education community took notice when the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, announced that it would host its World Conference in Morocco’s capital for the first time in its existence. It’s the kind of choice that makes a statement even before the meeting starts. In 1948, OMEP was founded in Prague during the first World Conference on Early Childhood, which brought together…
The shape of early childhood education in New Zealand is quietly negotiated in a room somewhere in Wellington, most likely with fluorescent lighting and a whiteboard covered in policy language that no one outside the sector will ever read. The decisions made there don’t make news. Seldom does it. However, the ramifications of those discussions, particularly with regard to language, identity, and who gets to define quality instruction, start to garner significant attention on a global scale. One of the more stable voices in those rooms has been OMEP Aotearoa New Zealand, the local branch of the World Organization for…
The timing has a subtle yet striking quality. Morocco’s Ministry of National Education and representatives from UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report team are getting ready to present a country report in Rabat at the Centre des Formations et des Rencontres Nationales in Hay Ennahda. The report will identify Morocco as a focus nation for foundational learning in Africa, alongside Zimbabwe, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Kenya. Education managers, trainers, and inspectors will be crammed into the room. There will be speeches. Information will be displayed. What happens to the kids who learned their first words in Tamazight? is a question that…
In nursery classrooms all over Britain, something subtly amazing is taking place. Sitting cross-legged on colorful mats, toddlers—those who still struggle to distinguish between left and right shoes—are leafing through pamphlets that introduce concepts like access to clean water, food poverty, and renewable energy. Not in scholarly, abstract terms. in images. in queries. In times when a three-year-old feels, in some way, entirely natural. With a kind of word-of-mouth momentum that no marketing budget can adequately account for, the I-Care Booklet Series has been making its way into early childhood settings. At the school gates, parents bring it up. Extra…
When everyone is staring at a screen, a certain silence descends upon a family dinner table. Not serene silence, but rather the absence of something that was once present. As part of a campaign that, on paper, seems almost too easy to implement—put your phone in a locker, spend time with your kids, and see what happens—parents from all over Spain described precisely that feeling when they gathered at shopping centers across the nation. Apparently, more happened than anyone had anticipated. The “Zero Screens Zone” campaign was run by Castellana Properties, a company that oversees shopping centers in Portugal and…
It’s difficult to imagine that a preschool classroom in a low-income neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, with its plastic chairs, crayon drawings taped crookedly to painted walls, and the unique sound of twenty young children learning how to use a pencil, is at the epicenter of a national political storm. However, it does. According to those who are paying the most attention, the stakes are extremely high. Argentina’s government is currently debating the Education Freedom Bill, a piece of legislation that, depending on who you ask, either quietly destroys something irreplaceable or expands opportunities. The World Organization for…
There is a moment when a practitioner realizes that a three-year-old in front of them is already behind. This can happen in community centers in South Wales, nurseries throughout the north of England, or underfunded children’s settings tucked into the corners of housing estates. Not even a little behind. According to data from the National Literacy Trust, they are a year and a half behind their more affluent peers in the development of basic language skills. The goal of OMEP UK’s New Leaders in Early Years Programme was to comprehend and, more urgently, address that silent and devastating gap. The…
At most international education conferences, there’s a point between the third plenary session and the lukewarm coffee when you realize the field has quietly advanced without making any announcements. As I browse the abstract submissions for the 78th OMEP World Assembly and World Conference, which will take place in Poznań, Poland in July, that feeling comes on fast. Something has changed. The researchers who are submitting their work are not merely making methodological adjustments. They are reconsidering the true purpose of early childhood education. At first glance, the conference theme, “When a Child Speaks…” Korczak’s Inspirations for Education and Children’s…