who Supporting children's early learning in France

Every two years, the Jacobs Foundation awards the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes to trailblazers seeking evidence-based solutions to education’s biggest challenges. In this series, Annie Brook man Byrne meets with the finalists of the 2022 awards. In part 10, Annie talks with Thomas and Long of 1001 mots in France’s education system is struggling to address social inequalities, which begin in early childhood. France lags far behind in setting up a system to study, detect, prevent, and mitigate academic or psychological difficulties in young children, both before and after school entry. Parental support interventions and childcare centers are key tools for promoting school readiness and improving children’s psychological well-being. Families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and with limited resources should have free access to such supports. Lime Long: In France, several solutions are needed to guarantee a promising future for children from underprivileged families. We advocate for the most important: We need more preschools at the national level, and should prioritize new facilities in the most deprived areas and neighborhoods. This must be accompanied by increased investment in the training and remuneration of professionals working in the early childhood sector. In addition, we should ensure that vulnerable children in the most disadvantaged areas have access to childcare facilities that focus on language stimulation. Every year, 100,000 pupils leave the school system without a diploma. We need to invest in education starting in early childhood, which is a key period for developing the ability to learn. I want to see improved and diversified care for young children, along with support for parents during this important and special period. We advocate for scientific research as an important ally in the development of innovative solutions to support parents and children. Priority should be given to evidence-based programs for parents that provide stimulating activities to promote early childhood development. This is what 1001 mots offers with our parenting program, which is based on scientific research and evidence of impact. Long Nguyen (MD, PhD) is a medical doctor conducting research in Public Health and healthcare delivery. He is a co-founder of 1001 mots and its current general secretary. His research focuses on the neuroscience of externalizing disorders, ADHD in particular, and on school-based preventive interventions to promote child and adolescent mental health. To that end, we provide distance support to parents with children up to age three in low-income regions in France. We combine an evidence-based approach to behavioral change with rigorous scientific evaluation, product research, and product development methods. Our programs tailored to deprived families, and consists of one-semester cycles of support that can be extended at the parent’s request. Parents receive three messages via SMS or MMS per week, as well as an age-appropriate book and a phone call from a speech therapist every two months. After four years, we are already seeing good results. In 2022 alone, we reached 4,000 children. When their pediatrician suggests that they join a program, 95% of parents agree to do so, and around 60% sign up for a second round of support. We’re really happy that 80% of parents report that the program has been useful. We’ve also seen positive results, especially from our last trial: We found that after just 4 months, parents of children under 1 were reading to their children 3 times as often each week and owned more books.