Critical Issues in Education: Poverty's Negative Impact on Early Childhood Development

Critical issues across education

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
A detailed critique of two articles based on poverty as a critical issue of early years of
education......................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
The early years are a period between infancy and young adulthood that can be seen from
birth to 8 years old and there are several education programs which include federal and privately
funded. Early age plays a major role in effectively transforming a person's vision, direction, and
goals. The purpose of early childhood education is to develop emotional, social and cognitive skills
that help to become a lifelong learner. Yes, the early years are related to a distinct phase of education
and that is why, it can be stated that it mainly focuses on the academic, social and cognitive skills that
groom a child. In addition to this, the role of the curriculum is important because it offers flexibility
which is beneficial for the children learning and it may not rigid. Through the curriculum, individuals
describe what comes next for a child that needs to be learned and taught so that child comes closer to an
intended outcome.
The article chosen for the present report would reflect how poverty acts as a common issue that
negatively affects the overall performance of the children and their learning as well. That is why, the
present study shed a light on the critical issue that is, poverty that affects education and children’s
growth in a negative manner. However, government keep focusing on this issue and implementing
their strategies accordingly to ensure better educational opportunities for children belonging to
marginalized families. By doing so, policymakers and educators attempt to eradicate the education
inequalities resulting from poverty.
MAIN BODY
A detailed critique of two articles based on poverty as a critical issue in the early years of
education
Article 1: Inequalities in early childhood care and development in low/middle-income countries:
2010–2018. BMJ Global Health
The risk of poverty in childhood learning is considered one of the most important aspects
that affect children learning. Also, it has been identified that strain poverty always created a
negative impact on families and its impact on the young children’s ability to learn as well.
Therefore, it can be stated that young children who experience poverty in their initial years of
life faces issue with regard to learning because they experience poor and they did not find any

effective resources in order to improve their condition appropriately (Choi, Wang and Jackson,
2019). Hence, it can be stated that children are at great risk of poverty than the population as a
whole. Through the article, it has been identified that inequalities in early childhood
development affect the nurturing of children and primary and secondary data collection methods
have been used in this article (Lu and et.al., 2020). Such that using data from 135 demographic
and Health Survey and Multiple Indicator Cluster surveys between 2010 and 2018, that describe
the trend in inequalities related to poverty. In this, different age groups of early childhood have
been chosen. This in turn reflected that the prevalence of children under the 5 years are not at
risk of poor development due to poverty and this factor affects the health, as there is an
association between the childhood and adulthood outcomes. Another result generated from the
article reflected that young children i.e. 36 to 59 months attend the program outside of the home.
Moreover, over the past decade, there has been a gap in income among people and due to
that, it prefers various factors according to their level of money. Along with this, education is a
right and still remains a distant dream of many students due to issues like poverty. Although
education is one of the primary rights of the students like food and shelter as well as the
constitution of the UK granted the right to live with dignity and honour to every citizen. To
ensure the fundamental rights have been taken by states so that free education is given to them.
Poverty affects many people, but it has mainly been seen in children in various countries (Félix
and Belo, 2019). It not only affects a child's development and educational outcomes as well as
affects a child's morality and understanding of right and wrong. Moreover, poverty affects
children on various levels such as physical, social, emotional and cognitive. According to the
report of NIH stress of poverty lead to impaired learning ability in children from impoverished
backgrounds. Physically children's ability to concentrate is affected by poor health and nutrition
as well as it is more common in a low-income households. Making use of prenatal drug use and
environmental toxins can impact negatively cognitive ability before birth. Moreover, another
factor is social-emotional such as children living in poverty often see themselves as victims of a
system as they affect lacking the ability to make choices that affects their lives. Although a poor
sense of agency affects focusses on students and affects building engagement in the classroom.
It has been found in many medical reports that long-term exposure to poverty results in
an increase in stress hormones that result in trauma and violence which affects brain