Early childhood care and education (ECCE), covering the period from birth to 8 years old, is crucial because it leverages a time of significant brain development in children. Quality ECCE can set the foundation for good health, nutrition, learning success, social-emotional development, and economic productivity throughout life.
Despite these benefits, ECCE often receives low priority in education policies and investment and may exclude marginalized groups. Much of ECCE is privately provided, adding to its vulnerability. Extending education rights to include early childhood care can significantly impact developmental outcomes for children. Evidence suggests that legal provisions for compulsory pre-primary education can boost early development.
However, there's no international framework that currently enshrines these rights, which limits global progress. Quality improvement in ECCE can be driven by better training for caregivers, more robust community engagement, and improved infrastructure, such as better water and sanitation services in early learning settings. Additionally, extending family-friendly policies like parental leave and childcare benefits can significantly enhance early learning environments.
Meeting SDG 4, which aims for inclusive and quality education for all, requires integrating ECCE. The Transforming Education Summit highlighted this integration to address the equity and relevance crises in education. Significant challenges include fragmented ECCE policies and services, insufficient funding, and a lack of comprehensive data.
Extending the right to education to include ECCE could greatly enhance early learning, yet no international legal framework currently ensures this right. Addressing these issues is critical for supporting foundational learning and ensuring equitable access to quality early education, essential for preparing children for primary education and beyond. This effort aligns with the objectives of the Tashkent Declaration to transform and improve global ECCE practices.
Disparities in child development begin early and are pronounced among disadvantaged groups. Approximately 30% of children worldwide are not on track developmentally, with those from poorer households and rural areas facing significant challenges. In contrast, 78% of children in wealthier households are developmentally on track compared to only 55% in the poorest ones. These children often lack access to early stimulation and educational resources, with only a fraction having books or playthings at home. ECCE is crucial for developing foundational skills necessary for lifelong learning.
However, it faces significant challenges including underfunding, lack of cohesive policies, and insufficient data. There is a pressing need to improve access and quality of ECCE to ensure that children are ready for primary education by 2030. Despite calls for increased funding, actual investment in ECCE remains low, with global median spending on pre-primary education at just 0.4% of GDP. Closing this financing gap is critical, especially considering that the required investment to meet pre-primary education goals by 2030 is estimated at USD 354 billion for low and middle-income countries.
UNESCO regards ECCE as a fundamental and integral part of the education system and a solid foundation on which to build lifelong education, lives, and careers. All of its work in this area is aligned with target 4.2 of Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ‘By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.’ To further advance this target, UNESCO established a Global Partnership Strategy to bridge the gap and ensure that quality ECCE, early primary school years, and family education are available for all children.
UNESCO’s work is based on the idea that ‘Learning begins at birth,’ introduced in the World Declaration on Education for All Jomtien declaration. As inscribed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), young children have the right not only to survive but to thrive and develop to their fullest potential. In 2000 the international community at the World Education Forum (Dakar 2000) committed itself to ‘expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.’ Ten years later, UNESCO’s World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education (Moscow 2010) warned that the EFA Goal on ECCE was ‘at great risk of not being achieved by 2015 unless urgent and resolute action is taken’ and highlighted ECCE as a social, human, and economic development imperative.
With only six years left to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on inclusive and quality education, the world remains significantly off-track. Millions of children are falling behind in their developmental milestones and many lack access to pre-school education, putting their future learning opportunities at risk. Addressing these educational deficits is crucial to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive and succeed.
A significant step forward to addressing these needs was taken with the adoption of The Tashkent Declaration for Early Childhood Care and Education, the outcome of the World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education (WCECCE), held in November 2022. As the first high-level intergovernmental event in the field of education to be organized after the Transforming Education Summit (TES), the conference served as a platform for diverse stakeholders to discuss experiences, challenges, practices and innovations. UNESCO’s member states have pledged to invest at least 10% of their total education spending on pre-primary education. The discussion focused on achieving SDG target 4.2. The conference propelled efforts to nurture foundational skills for socialization, well-being, and lifelong learning, recognizing that inequalities in learning and development start early in life.
To further support these goals, one of the commitments of the Tashkent Declaration is the first Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education, jointly prepared by UNESCO and UNICEF, with the support of GPE, ILO, OECD, WHO, and The LEGO Foundation. Building on new findings on the key issues facing ECCE, the report provides recommendations to governments and the international community to promote an integrated ECCE ecosystem that better supports children and families.
UNESCO collaborates with governments and other key stakeholders concerned with the care and education of young children from birth until primary school entry. Its ECCE activities focus on promoting holistic and quality pre-primary education for all children over the age of 3, ensuring the use of developmentally appropriate pedagogies and emphasizing the links with primary education as well as early childhood health, nutrition and social services.
Concretely it works with Member States at national, regional and international levels by influencing policies and practices through evidence-based advocacy, knowledge generation and sharing, partnership-building, capacity-building and technical assistance. These include work in teacher development through projects like STEPP (The Survey of Teachers in Pre-Primary Education), parenting education and family literacy, and measurement and monitoring.
UNESCO promotes the integration of an ECCE component in countries’ education sector plans to address the needs of different age groups and includes the marginalized. Partnerships that involve working with health, nutrition and social sectors as well as civil society and private sector actors help widen the reach to children.
UNESCO regards ECCE as a fundamental part of the education system and a solid foundation for building lifelong education, lives, and careers. Its work in this area aligns with SDG target 4.2, which aims to ensure that all children have access to quality early childhood development, care, and pre-primary education by 2030. UNESCO promotes the integration of ECCE in countries’ education sector plans, addressing the needs of various age groups, including marginalized populations.
Key recommendations to ensure a robust foundation for children's rights in ECCE include promoting ECCE for school readiness, prioritizing vulnerable children, supporting parents and caregivers, valuing ECCE personnel, investing in data, leveraging research, increasing investments by governments, enhancing international efforts and partnerships, and expanding the right to education through a legally binding international framework. By implementing these recommendations, stakeholders can address the comprehensive needs of young children globally, setting a foundation for better educational outcomes and lifelong benefits.