Summary

Bangladesh was one of the first countries to sign the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in the early 1990s. Ever since, that framework of children’s fundamental civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights has influenced the laws and plans for children in Bangladesh.

While the ECD sector in Bangladesh actively promotes investments in programs and services to support children’s early development, a fundamental obstacle remains—many people lack a deep understanding of the developmental processes that play out during the early years and into school-age years, including the key cognitive and socioemotional skills that are developing during this key early window.

This report—the culmination of a series of research activities undertaken by the FrameWorks Institute and the BRAC Institute of Educational Development (BRAC IED), BRAC University— describes a set of empirically tested framing strategies, embedded within a larger narrative framework, that can effectively improve understanding of and support for ECD in Bangladesh.