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Early childhood education is a priority for the Government of Liberia and USAID. Through Together for Early Childhood Evidence, ECE stakeholders in Liberia come together to discuss key issues.

The country team in Liberia has been meeting since 2019. The team completed the CPDMA Diagnostic Toolkit to define the purposes of pre-primary data in Liberia and align university and ministry priorities for how data can improve ECE quality. The team identified classroom instruction as an area where ECE data can provide leverage for promoting behavior change.

Liberia’s new pre-primary curriculum and teacher planning guide emphasize child-centered and play-based approaches. However, classroom instruction is not regularly monitored, making it difficult to determine whether teachers are effectively implementing these approaches. As an extension of the Together for Early Childhood Evidence work, in 2020/2021 the Liberia team adapted ECD Measure’s Brief Early Childhood Quality Inventory (BEQI) to help Liberian researchers and policymakers understand the current state of preschool quality and make choices about how to improve. Preliminary findings can be found here.

In 2021, Together for Early Childhood Evidence launched a research project in Liberia to provide a comprehensive mapping of ECE and ECD providers across the country. The Liberia country team is working with the University of Liberia and the Liberian Ministry of Education to create the first catalog of public, private, community, and faith-based ECD centers and schools in the country. The data collected from this mapping will build on the work under the above-mentioned BEQI project. It will also help focus and manage resources and identify gaps for improving quality early childhood education. The mapping will take place in three counties across three regions of the country and will include one rural and one urban district in each county. The project will map the location and programming characteristics, such as materials and use of curricula, of as many providers as possible within the scope of the study. At present, the mapping is expected to be completed by the middle of 2022.

Key Indicators from Liberia 

Data from UNESCO and UNICEF 

Country Team Members