This paper presents a thematic analysis of documents produced during a recent‘Regional Policy Forum on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)’, attended byover 200 participants including representatives from key international donor organisationsand high-level officials from over 30 countries across the Asia Pacific region. Thepaper begins by providing a brief overview of international developments in ECCEover the past two decades, highlighting a growing argument that points to the needfor a shift in policy and programming agendas away from target setting at internationallevels, towards the promotion and support of localized, contextually groundedapproaches to supporting policies and programmes in ECCE. In an attempt to findways of establishing empirical support for this argument, the paper explores the extentto which key messages delivered by international donor organizations and representativesat the Policy Forum can be seen to reflect the current activities and concerns ofcountries within the region (as expressed through individual country reports presentedduring the forum). Based on results of this analysis, the paper concludes with recommendationsfor balancing the ‘local’ and ‘international’ influence on policy making andagenda setting as countries in the Asia Pacific region move forward with provision offormalized ECCE post-2015.
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