III - What has been achieved: progress toward the EFA goals (page 6)

Goal 1: Early childhood care and education (ECCE)  

The Jomtien Declaration made it clear: "learning begins at birth" (not, as many assumed, when children enter primary school). This brought to the foreground the importance of the first years of a child's life in determining her/his future educational achievement and broader developmental outcomes.

Globally, considerable progress has been made in achieving the first Dakar goal. Early childhood well-being is improving, and child mortality and malnutrition rates have declined in many countries in all regions of the world (although many, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West, still have high rates). Enrolment in pre-school programmes has also expanded over the last decade as more and more governments have realised the positive impact which a comprehensive, multi-sectoral approach to the health, nutrition, and cognitive and psycho-social development of young children can have on both educational efficiency and later social outcomes. Of particular significance is the growing body of research in the last decade that has shed light on both the critical importance and the cost-efficiency of ECCE (e.g., the brain development that occurs in the first years of a child's life and ECCE's high rate of return to investment).

Many countries, such as in Latin America and the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, have developed ECCE policies, and more and more of these, including many in Asia and the Pacific, understand that these much be multi-sectoral and comprehensive in nature. Thus, gross enrolment ratios in pre-primary education are almost 50% or more in East Asia and the Pacific (49%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (68%) and have increased significantly since 2000 in South/West Asia (from 25% to 42%) and Central Asia (22% to 29%). But low rates and little improvement are seen in sub-Saharan Africa (from 12% to 17%) and the Arab States (from 16% to 19%).

The important parenthetical part of this goal, "especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children ", has been less successfully met. According to the 2011 Global Monitoring Report, among the sixty-eight countries with high child mortality rates, only nineteen will likely meet the MDG child mortality target of 2015, and one-third of all children under five years of age in developing countries suffer from stunting, a sign of poor nutritional status (2011 Global Monitoring Report Summary, page 9). Around the world, although gender parity in pre-school education has generally been achieved (except in the Arab States), expansion of ECCE programmes has largely been to the benefit of urban, well-to-do groups, thus both denying such programmes to the most disadvantaged children (e.g., of poor and rural families and those with disabilities) who have the most to gain from them and increasing the gap in school readiness between the rich and the poor and between urban and rural populations.

Ministries of Education, too, have been slow to assume the role they could and should assume in regard to the well-being of children aged 0-3. Such children are usually seen as the responsibility of other ministries -- health and/or social welfare, for example -- when, in fact, the education sector can also contribute significantly to their well-being. Education ministries, for example, can ensure that any adult education/literacy courses and even formal school curricula (especially in secondary school) contain messages important to future parents in regard to the health and nutrition of both mothers and young children and the essential need for these children to receive stronger cognitive and psycho-social support and stimulation from birth.

The majority of countries in the world now have some kind of early childhood policy in place. But the regional EFA reports still reveal a considerable lack of understanding, at both national and community level, about the importance of ECCE. Thus, these policies, where they exist, frequently:

• are not based on the systematic definition of, and the collection of data on, relevant indicators of both child development and the ECCE sub-sector as a whole
• lack information and data on the many non-formal, community- and private sector-based programmes which are expanding in many countries; these include both good quality programmes for the elite and poor quality, often unsupervised and even unsafe programmes for the less advantaged
• lack a comprehensive, coherent, multi-sectoral, and multi-partner ECCE framework and strategy (across ministries, with the NGO and private sector) embedded in larger national development plans
• have no overall policy coordinating mechanism (such as the National ECCE Council in the Philippines) across the relevant, multiple partners; such a mechanism is essential for effective service delivery
• have no systematic structure for training the range of caregivers and pre-school teachers required for a good ECCE system (e.g., fewer than 10% of ECCE personnel in Africa are considered qualified) or assessing the system's strengths and weaknesses
• neglect not only the health and nutritional needs of children aged 0-3 but also, due to lack of Ministry of Education interest, their need for cognitive and psycho-social development
• a serious lack of funding, at least from the government sector -- which leads to the risk of unsupervised, private sector-dominated ECCE provision

The development by 2015 of comprehensive, integrated ECCE policies and related strategies and programmes which systematically respond to the above concerns is therefore an important priority for all countries of the world.

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