Pre-primary education gives children a solid foundation upon which all learning depends, making every stage of education that follows more efficient and productive, says a joint report of the UNESCO and UNICEF.

By Gursimran Kaur

The world is not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 and ensure inclusive and quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all, says a joint report from UNESCO and UNICEF.

In the report with titled ‘Global report on early childhood care and education: the right to a strong foundation’, the two UN bodies says that “education, starting with early childhood education, is facing twin crises of equity and relevance.”

Saying that inequalities start early, particularly affecting development outcomes for the most disadvantaged children, the report says, “children growing up in the poorest households and in rural areas are further behind. Only 55 per cent of children aged 36 to 59 months growing up in the poorest households are developmentally on track, compared to 78 per cent of children in the richest households.”

It says that “supporting readiness for foundational learning must be an essential part of the response to the learning crisis.” Alluding to the changing of gears due to the COVID-19 pandemic that aggravated the global learning crisis, the reports says that an estimated 37 per cent of the world’s children (more than 300 million) will not reach minimum proficiency levels in reading by 2030.

“Access to quality early learning and care is a key way to help children develop the skills needed for foundational learning and to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education by 2030,” says the UNESCO-UNICEF report.

“Real progress on supporting equitable access to quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) remains elusive,” it says, adding that “commitments have not translated into action and at the current rate of progress, achieving SDG Target 4.2 by 2030 is off track,” it says.

The report by the two UN bodies says that extending the right to education to include the right to early childhood care and education could accelerate progress on SDG Target 4.2. However, it says, there is not yet an international legal framework that explicitly guarantees children’s right to early childhood care and education. Extending the right to education to include the right to ECCE could be an important policy lever to accelerate progress SDG Target 4.2

Leveraging key actors

Looking through the lens of the child at the core and adopting a whole-of-child developmental approach, the report explores how children learn and develop and how the key actors in children’s early environments – parents, families, educators and the community at large – can be leveraged through public policies and programmes to improve children’s learning and wellbeing. The report advocates for and gives evidence of the importance of ECCE to address the twin crisis of equity and relevance and support foundational learning.

Saying that early literacy activities promote school readiness and higher reading achievement, the report speaks of new analysis that reveal that children who engage more frequently in early literacy activities at home tend to be equipped with better literacy skills. These children were also better prepared for primary school, and more likely to show higher reading achievement at age 10.

Another new analysis showed that participation in organised learning one year before the official age of entry to primary school positively affected reading achievement in the second or third grades. It emphasises that the early years are important for building foundational numeracy skills and caregivers can influence children’s attitudes to maths learning.

“Maths learning arises from complex interactions between emerging cognitive skills and the social-cultural context,” it says, adding, “caregivers and educators can help build positive attitudes and improve children’s learning by creating a supportive environment that encourages numeracy activities and diminishes anxiety around maths.”