A Global Compact on Learning - Brookings Institution

children’s earliest years are the foundation for their
physical and mental health, emotional security, and
the development of competencies. 101 Nations should
devote at least 0.5 percent to 1 percent of gross domestic
product to parent and early childhood education.
102 In particular, relying on all families to cover
the costs through user fees is problematic in light of
the evidence that children from the poorest households
benefit the most from ECD interventions.
Existing infrastructure should be utilized to deliver
these services at a low cost. Parent and family support
programs can be integrated into health services.
Governments should also engage the private sector
to support ECD programs, which often have a vested
interest in healthier, more productive consumers.
In addition to contributions from the government
(both national and local), families, community and
social organizations, the private sector, and international
organizations, one new method for financing
ECD is the development of microenterprise projects.
Women (typically) who want to begin a home-based
care center to earn an income receive seed funding
and relevant training to ensure the quality of the
service being provided to the children in their communities.
Similarly, income-generating projects (i.e.,
school-based gardens and handicrafts) can allocate a
portion of their income to the operation of the center
while participating parents earn additional income
or reinvest the profit in expanding the project.
Strategy 1B: Ensure That Girls and Boys
Start School at an Appropriate Age
In many developing countries, grade 1 classrooms
are highly mixed with children as young as four and
as old as eleven. Thus some children may be in a formal
school setting at too young an age, which can be
linked to the absence of ECD opportunities, while
others may have started school too late, missing the
opportunity for early learning with all its cumulative
benefits. Both underage and overage students
present additional challenges for teachers because
they are at a different phase developmentally than
the six- and seven-year-olds expected to be in grade
1. According to a recent study, no education system
with good participation rates and high levels of
achievement on international achievement tests has
a high age-in-grade dispersion. Either dispersion
should be reduced or carefully planned multigrade
teaching and learning approaches should be used,
such as modularized curricula, when a single class
contains students from more than one grade level. 103
In addition, when children enroll in school at a later
age, the risks of repetition and dropping out are
greater. 104 This leads to increased costs for both the
family and society. Girls are at a particular dropout
risk when they are not at grade-for-age because the
pressures they face can change drastically once they
hit puberty. If they have only reached grade 3 or 5
before there is pressure to marry or work, learning
outcomes will be far below expectations. For instance,
a recent household survey in Senegal found
that survival rates to grade 5 for children who started
school two years late were 10 percentage points
lower than for children starting on time. 105
There is general agreement that early learning is
highly effective. Children who lose that chance run
the risk of never catching up with their more fortunate
peers. In many developing countries, girls
out-enroll boys for age-in-grade, meaning girls are
more often than boys at the appropriate age for their
grade, until they reach the age of fourteen to sixteen.
Beyond this age in Sub-Saharan Africa, boys almost
invariably drop out less. Even when more girls than
boys start school on time, girls may face increased
risks from being in class with much older boys as
they enter adolescence. Age-in-grade has been increasing
more often than decreasing, and the poorest
groups have experienced greater increases in age-ingrade
in some countries. Household wealth remains
the strongest predictor of being overage in school. 106
Therefore, addressing dispersion in age-in-grade will
only be possible by focusing on the poorest children
and ensuring that they enroll at the appropriate age.
Two main actions need to be taken to achieve Strategy
1B:
• Encourage on-time entry through public
policies, campaigns, and tracking.
• Develop and support multigrade and multiage
teaching approaches.
A <strong>Global</strong> Compa c t on Learning: Taking Action on Educat i o n in Developing Countries
C e n t e r for Universal Educat i o n at Brookings
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