UNESCO has announced three winners of the 2017-2018 UNESCO-Hamdan bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize. Diklat Berjenjang from Indonesia is one of the winners.  Diklat Berjenjang provides training for ECED Teachers. With the support from DFAT Trust Fund under the ECED Frontline program, the Bank team provides TA to strengthen the quality of the program and link it closer to the village community. “The Diklat Berjenjang project from Indonesia is rewarded for bringing quality professional development to early childhood teachers, notably in the poorest and most remote areas. It helps meet Indonesia’s need for teachers skilled in creating stimulating learning environments for young learners. It helps identify potential teacher trainers and provides step-by-step written guides, follow-up assignments and exchanges.” In the first two years of the Pilot, working in 25 districts, a training grant was disbursed using a community development program under the Ministry of Villages (Generasi Sehat Cerdas) and was able to exceed the target of training 15,0000 village teachers. MoEC is excited and very supportive and has adopted the enhanced training resources recommended to them. Moreover, MoEC is actively disseminating the approach to more districts. The Ministry of Villages is also very supportive and is currently developing a facilitation manual for village cadres to encourage villages to consider using the Village Fund to improve ECED services, including supporting their teachers to participate in Diklat Berjenjang. With the very recent approval of the program extension of the ECED Frontline program, the Bank team will continue providing TA to MoEC for dissemination, including using information from our evaluation to inform the scale-up plan. The three winners were selected from 150 nominations submitted by the Governments of UNESCO’s Member States and UNESCO partner organizations on the recommendation of an International Jury of education professionals.

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NCEE news roundup: World Bank Releases Robust, Long-Term Database of International Education Performance