Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: A recent Nature article modelled within-country inequalities in primary, secondary, and tertiary education and forecast progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets related to education (SDG 4). However, their paper entirely overlooks inequalities in achieving Target 4.2, which aims to achieve universal access to quality early childhood development, care and preschool education by 2030. This is an important omission because of the substantial brain, cognitive and socioemotional developments that occur in early life and because of increasing evidence of early-life learning's large impacts on subsequent education and lifetime wellbeing. We provide an overview of this evidence and use new analyses to illustrate medium- and long-term implications of early learning, first by presenting associations between pre-primary programme participation and adolescent mathematics and science test scores in 73 countries and secondly, by estimating the costs of inaction (not making pre-primary programmes universal) in terms of forgone lifetime earnings in 134 countries. We find considerable losses, comparable to or greater than current governmental expenditures on all education (as percentages of GDP), particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. In addition to improving primary, secondary and tertiary schooling, we conclude that to attain SDG 4 and reduce inequalities in a post-COVID era, it is essential to prioritize quality early childhood care and education, including adopting policies that support families to promote early learning and their children's education.
Source: npj Science of Learning
Authors: Linda M. Richter, Jere R. Behrman, Pia Britto, Claudia Cappa, Caroline Cohrssen, Jorge Cuartas, Bernadette Daelmans, Amanda E. Devercelli, Günther Fink, Sandra Fredman, Jody Heymann, Florencia Lopez Boo, Chunling Lu, Elizabeth Lule, Dana Charles McCoy, Sara N. Naicker, Nirmalo Rao, Abbie Raikes, Alan Stein, Claudia Vazquez, Hirokazu Yoshikawa
Institutions: University of the Witwatersrand, University of Pennsylvania, United Nations Children's Fund, University of Hong Kong, Harvard University, World Health Organization, World Bank Group, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel, University of Oxford, University of California, Los Angeles, Inter-American Development Bank, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Action Network, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Global TIES for Children, New York University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,190
Funders: Open Society Foundations, World Health Organization, Inter-American Development Bank, Brigham and Women's Hospital, University of Nebraska Medical Center, UNICEF, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Universität Basel, UK Research and Innovation, University of Oxford, University of Hong Kong, University of California, Los Angeles, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Economic and Social Research Council, National Institute of Mental Health
OpenAlex ID: W3198154877