Author(s) |
Richter, Linda M
Behrman, Jere R
Britto, Pia
Cappa, Claudia
Cohrssen, Caroline
Cuartas, Jorge
Daelmans, Bernadette
Devercelli, Amanda E
Fink, Günther
Fredman, Sandra
Heymann, Jody
Boo, Florencia Lopez
Lu, Chunling
Lule, Elizabeth
McCoy, Dana Charles
Naicker, Sara N
Rao, Nirmalo
Raikes, Abbie
Stein, Alan
Vazquez, Claudia
Yoshikawa, Hirokazu
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Publication Date |
2021-09-10
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Abstract |
<p>A recent <i>Nature</i> 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 longterm 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.</p>
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Citation |
npj Science of Learning, v.6, p. 1-7
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ISSN |
2056-7936
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Pubmed ID |
34508088
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Link | |
Publisher |
Nature Publishing Group
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Rights |
Attribution 4.0 International
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Title |
Measuring and forecasting progress in education: what about early childhood?
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Type of document |
Journal Article
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Entity Type |
Publication
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Name | Size | format | Description | Link |
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openpublished/MeasuringCohrssen2021JournalArticle.pdf | 1731.521 KB | application/pdf | Published version | View document |