What education for the young child?
	Countries, North and South, are seeking to expand early childhood care and education in line with the Education for All agenda. While there would appear to be general agreement about the benefits of early childhood provision, a divergence of views prevails among specialists as to the appropriate pedagogy for each age group

	A recent early childhood review mission to Kenya remarked that poor, illiterate mothers in Kenya’s Machakos District were vehemently opposed to sending their children to an early childhood development centre if it did not teach them how to read and write. Indeed, some parents find it hard to accept that what they perceive as ‘play’ is a form of education. One result is that early childhood development centres are being turned de facto into early primary education facilities, with 3-year-olds arrayed in rows of chairs and desks, facing the teacher standing at a blackboard. Parents’ misunderstanding of what is at stake is symptomatic of a certain confusion that prevails about what early childhood care and development actually is. While there is general agreement that learning begins at birth, there is a divergence of views among professionals concerning two concepts: ‘early childhood care and development’ and ‘early childhood education’. In a nutshell, care vs. education. “The ultimate purpose of early childhood services is to promote the holistic development of the child: his or her emotions, personality, and cognitive skills,” says Soo-Hyang Choi, Chief of UNESCO’s Section for Early Childhood and Inclusive Education. “It should not be considered as an extension of primary education.” It is significant, therefore, that the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development, a consortium of agencies, donors, NGOs and foundations that work in this field, recently set up a working group to address the early childhood component within the Education for All framework. Indeed, five years after the international community set the expansion of early childhood care and education as one of the Education for All goals, state provision in developing countries is still extremely low, with early childhood care still often the preserve of parents, the extended family and private organizations. Little state involvement According to the 2005 EFA Global Monitoring Report, in India, gross enrolment in all kinds of early childhood services is 30 per cent, and is virtually non-existent in much of sub-Saharan Africa, such as Burundi (1.3 per cent), Mali (1.6 per cent) or Senegal (3.3 per cent). The average for sub-Saharan Africa is just 5.8 per cent. There are exceptions, such as Cuba, where, according to Robert Myers, founding director of the Consultative Group for Early Childhood Care and Development, “an extraordinary effort has been made to provide all children under 6 with some kind of education and development programme”. But in many developing countries early childhood care and education (ECCE) is not part of government policy. “It may figure in national plans, but the funding strategies often remain dependent on the private sector and civil society support,” says Ann Therese N’dong Jatta, Director of UNESCO’s Basic Education Division. Clearly, part of the problem is competition for a share of the budget in cash-strapped economies. “In Africa and Asia,” says Kathy Bartlett, of the Aga Khan Foundation and Co-Director of the Consultative Group for Early Childhood Care and Development, “governments are having a hard time just getting the primary education part there, and the challenge is that they sometimes see early childhood development as a luxury.” Understandably, therefore, ECCE for young infants, especially for the under-3s, is still mainly private, often set up in response to local needs and funded by NGOs, such as Save the Children, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Aga Khan Foundation, etc., and UNICEF. But the picture varies enormously from country to country. In India, for example, 95 per cent of expenditure on pre-primary education comes from public funds, while the figure is just 5 per cent in Indonesia. As for the industrialized countries, state provision of early childhood care and education is gradually becoming more widespread, albeit with significant variations in access and quality, especially for the poor. In the United States, for example, 90 per cent of provision for under-3s is from the private sector (60 per cent non-profit and 30 per cent for profit), giving way gradually to publicly-funded kindergarten provision by school districts from the age of 4. Reaping the benefits International agencies and NGOs are trying to persuade governments that it may be false economy not to invest in early childhood services. In a recent document published by the Consultative Group, Caroline Arnold points out that ECCE is first of all a right, under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. She also cites evidence that it is a “frontline strategy for achieving poverty reduction goals”, while also being a “significant entry point within, and foundation for, diverse broad educational, social and health achievements.” Similarly, a World Bank/Consultative Group publication by Judith Evans and Robert Myers, Childhood Counts, claims that “neglecting children in their first years decreases the likelihood that they will grow to be healthy, productive citizens, and has been demonstrated to have economic and social implications for the society as a whole. The benefits to society of early childhood care and development programmes are: lower child morbidity, higher enrolment, lower repetition, fewer dropouts, improved school performance … and lower crime. Studies in Turkey and in Latin America show that the benefits of early childhood education are much greater among poor children. And reports from certain East African countries and Nepal reveal that children who have attended pre-school – 3-6 year-olds – go to primary school more prepared and better ready to learn. Indeed, the argument that pre-school is a useful preparation for primary school is easier to demonstrate than more nebulous concepts, such as ‘cognitive development’ that may be hard to measure. A response to needs For Helen Penn, Professor of Early Childhood at the University of East London (UK), one of the obstacles to the successful implementation of ECCE in the South is that the models and the economic arguments were developed in the North, and do not travel well. The claims for financial savings “are, in general, hugely optimistic and have limited application in many developing countries,” she says. Meanwhile, the emphasis on the benefits of ECCE for the child is fairly recent. In many developed countries and the former Soviet Union, most of the well-established, state-run systems of care and education in early childhood came about as a response to women’s need (or, more recently, desire) to find paid work outside the home. In France, where some 70 per cent of women are in paid employment, nearly all children from 3 – 6 years of age attend a state-run école maternelle, while subsidies of one form or another are available for childcare for the under-3s that includes activities aimed at stimulating and integrating the child socially. And, since educational reforms in Sweden in 2001 and 2002, all children from 1 to 5 years now have the right to nursery school, no matter how much the parents earn, or whether they work. Increasing urbanization In the developing countries, where mothers usually work in the informal sector – in the fields or selling at the market – the demand for early childhood services is not articulated. Mothers are presumed to be at home which means that governments are not forced to act. More broadly, in rural areas of much of Asia and Africa children may be co-opted by parents from a young age to carry out household chores, leaving little time for play or pre-school. But there are exceptions. In Bangladesh, for example, a local NGO, Phulki (‘spark’ in Bengali) persuaded garment factories – which mainly employ women – to set up factory-based crèche facilities for children between 6 weeks of age and 2 years. These give breast-feeding mothers access to their infants during working hours, so they no longer have to give up essential income to look after their babies at home. Initially funded by Phulki, the crèche is now managed jointly by the employer and employees. The steady migration in developing countries from rural areas to towns and cities brings its own challenges for young children, as an increasing number of woman work in the formal sector. UNDP estimates that by 2015, some 42.8 per cent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa will live in towns and cities, compared to 21 per cent in 1975. “A rise in urban population is closely associated with a rise in double income households,” says a 2003 UNESCO report on early childhood care and education in E-9 countries, “with less access to childcare support from family members.” Redefining responsibilities For many developing nations providing early childhood services for the full zero to 6 spectrum is therefore a daunting challenge. Although governments worldwide are bound by the EFA agenda to provide some form of early childhood provision, there has long been a split between the period from birth to 3, which is seen as the responsibility of parents and largely in the domain of the social and health sectors, and the period from 3 to 6, more likely to fall within the realm of education. Because the Education Ministry (the ‘lead’ ministry where EFA is concerned) is less familiar with early childhood services to younger children, it has a tendency to copy the primary school model and, in the name of ECCE, provide ‘early schooling’. “This is a problem,” says Soo-Hyang Choi. “Early schooling is not early childhood care and education.”
	Publication date -