Target 4.2 reaffirms the international community’s focus on ensuring strong foundations for all children through early childhood care and education. Monitoring the concepts in the target poses three challenges: (a) there is not yet sufficient information on how many children benefit from pre-primary education for at least one year; (b) the proposed indicators do not capture the concept of quality of provision; and (c) while the target goes beyond care and education to early childhood development, the feasibility of introducing a monitoring mechanism for the latter is uncertain.

Pre-primary education is compulsory in 49 countries, and free and compulsory for at least one year in 36 Click to Tweet

Target 4.2 reaffirms the international community’s focus on ensuring strong foundations for all children through early childhood care and education. Monitoring the concepts in the target poses three challenges: (a) there is not yet sufficient information on how many children benefit from pre-primary education for at least one year; (b) the proposed indicators do not capture the concept of quality of provision; and (c) while the target goes beyond care and education to early childhood development, the feasibility of introducing a monitoring mechanism for the latter is uncertain.

ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION

Comparing participation rates across countries is more difficult for pre-primary than for primary and secondary education. Pre-primary education age groups and starting ages are less standardized than at other levels. Relatively few countries have free and/or compulsory pre-primary education: It is compulsory in 49 countries, and free and compulsory for at least one year in 36.

Globally, about 67% of children one year younger than the primary school entrance age are enrolled in pre-primary or primary education. This estimate is close to but does not always coincide with household survey estimates of previous experience in pre-primary education among first-grade students, which can also track attendance levels by household wealth. Among 3- to 4-year-olds in low and middle income countries, children in the richest households were almost six times as likely as the poorest children to attend early childhood education.

QUALITY

The target emphasizes the provision of education of good quality. Quality may be understood as the extent to which school and classroom settings (including structures and teaching processes) and systems support the holistic development of children, particularly those at risk of social exclusion. While countries need to set their own goals and quality standards, there are tools to monitor quality in early childhood provision in a comparable way, though they have prompted policy debates. Among 21 low and middle income countries in a World Bank review of early childhood policies, 13 set basic standards on pupil/teacher ratios but only 8 enforced them.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES

Target 4.2 focuses on ensuring children begin formal schooling developmentally on track and ‘ready for primary school’. This holistic view marks a shift from a view of child development based exclusively on health-related indicators. Deciding how best to measure child development is complex. There is a need to track normative development across cultures and develop measurement approaches based on the findings.

The measure with the highest current coverage is the UNICEF Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI). Across 56 mostly low and middle income countries over 2010–2015, it found that about 70% of 3-year-olds and 80% of 4-year-olds were developmentally on track. The index consists of four components but is strongly determined by one of them, literacy and numeracy, which can be criticized as reflecting early education norms rather than cognitive capacity.

A key factor helping children reach their potential is a home environment that provides interactions and learning materials. Adult household members in Ukraine engaged almost all 3- to 4-year-olds in at least four activities, compared with only 40% of children in Ghana. Across 54 mostly low and middle income countries over 2010–2015, 19% of households had at least 3 children’s books and 7.5% had at least 10. Among the poorest 20%, less than 1% of households had at least 10 books.