Survey of Teachers in Pre-primary Education (STEPP) Project

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Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) provides multiple benefits for children, such as better educational attainment and learning achievement, and enhanced social, emotional and physical wellbeing. These benefits depend on the quality of ECCE, which is strongly influenced by the presence of competent, motivated and well-supported teachers.

UNESCO launched the Survey of Teachers in Pre-primary Education (STEPP) project in May 2015 to develop and implement an international pre-primary education personnel survey for use in low- and middle-income countries. Participating countries are the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Indonesia, Namibia, the Philippines, Togo and Viet Nam.

STEPP collects data and information from teachers and directors of ECCE centres on factors affecting the quality of teaching and learning in pre-primary education. These factors are:

Working conditions and job satisfaction of ECCE personnel
Pedagogical and professional practices of ECCE personnel
Training and professional development of ECCE personnel
Characteristics of ECCE personnel and settings in which they work

The project generates evidence and insight to inform the development of effective policies and strategies improving the quality of ECCE and professionalization of the personnel. It also gives teachers and directors of ECCE centres the opportunity to voice their views and discuss the challenges they face in their work, subsequently helping shape reforms and improve practice.

STEPP is a UNESCO-OECD Joint Initiative, developed in alignment with OECD TALIS Starting Strong Survey (3S), an international Early Childhood Education and Care personnel survey targeting OECD countries. It also benefits from the cooperation and advice of individual experts as well as Education International, ILO, OMEP, Teacher Taskforce, UIS, UNESCO-IICBA and UNICEF.

Generous support has been provided to the project implementation by of the Hamdan bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Foundation.

Timeline of activities

2019: Field trial
November 2019: Report on the lessons learned from the implementation of the pilot study and field trial
2020: Main study (planned)
2021: International report production and launch (planned)