A global call to action for early childhood

Strong foundations: Early childhood care and education
19
A key issue is how to recruit and
retain large numbers of trained ECCE
personnel. To draw more candidates
to the field, some countries are
developing flexible entry routes
into higher education and teacher
training. Several Caribbean islands
give competency-based credit. Modern
technology is also being harnessed
in several countries. Pakistan has
created an Early Childhood Education
Certificate Programme that includes
in-service training workshops. The
Early Childhood Development Virtual
University (ECDVU) is a training and
capacity-building initiative to help
meet the need for leadership and
development in this field in Africa
and the Middle East. Students, who
are in-service early childhood staff,
are taught by faculty members from
around the world and work with
mentors in their own country or
region.
To ease the transition from early
childhood programmes to primary
school, several countries are
introducing measures to assure
professional continuity between
the two levels. These measures
include joint training (offered in
France, Ireland, Jamaica, and the
UK), emphasis on active learning
approaches, and equal professional
status between ECCE and primary
school teachers.
Despite these positive trends, several
areas require further attention in
relation to training: engaging parents
and other caregivers more actively;
adopting inclusive practices for
children with disabilities and other
special education needs; working with
linguistically and culturally diverse
children; and meeting the needs
of orphans and vulnerable children
(particularly those affected by HIV/
AIDS) and of children in emergency
and crisis situations.
Assuring adequate financing
Expanding and improving ECCE will
require raising additional public and
private funds and allocating them
through more efficient financing
mechanisms. Given the variety of
situations involved, country-specific
estimates of the costs of expanding
and improving ECCE are of greater
policy relevance than a global estimate.
Sixty-five of the seventy-nine countries
with data allocated less than 10%
of education spending to ECCE in
2004. Over half of those sixty-five
countries allocated less than 5%. Of
the fourteen countries allocating more
than 10%, most were in Europe.
As a share of GNP, public expenditure
on pre-primary education is greatest
in Central and Eastern Europe
(0.5%), compared to 0.4% in North
America and Western Europe and
0.2% in Latin America. For North
America and Western Europe as a
whole, expenditure on pre-primary
programmes is around 26% of the
total for primary education, though the
share rises to around 60% in France
and Germany. In Latin America and
the Caribbean, expenditure on preprimary
education averages 14% of
that on primary, with large variations
across countries.
The small share of total public
education spending allocated to
pre-primary education reflects low
enrolment ratios rather than low
spending per child. For all countries
with data, average public expenditure
per child is 85% of that at primary
level. Indeed, when the full costs of
pre-primary education are met by
the state, as tends to be the case
still in the former socialist countries
of Central and Eastern Europe, unit
costs are almost 25% higher in preprimary
than in primary education,
mainly because pupil-staff ratios are
lower. In North America and Western
Europe and in Latin America and
the Caribbean, public expenditure
per child in pre-primary education
averages closer to 70% of that in
primary (though reaching about 90%
in France, Germany, and Greece). In
the few countries with data in Sub-
Saharan Africa, South and West Asia,
and the Arab States, spending on preprimary
is very low as a percentage of
that for primary.
While it is not possible to provide a
realistic estimate of the global cost of
meeting the ECCE goal, a few countryspecific
exercises have been carried
out, using a range of assumptions
about coverage and content. Five
scenarios have been estimated for
Burkina Faso, for example, which is
a country characterised by very low
coverage of children from birth to
age 6 (1.2% in 2005). Such exercises
can clarify the financial implications
of specific choices (coverage, nature
of service, child/staff ratios, staff
qualifications, facilities) and explore
the trade-offs, such as choosing to
invest in providing more coverage as
opposed to putting more money into
staff qualifications.
Overall, funding of ECCE is both
public and private, with public funds
often provided by more than one level
of government. The relative shares
of public and private funding vary
considerably. Among OECD countries,
for instance, the parents’ share runs as
high as 60% of the total in the United
States but closer to 20% in Sweden
and France. Among developing
countries the variations are even
greater. In Indonesia, ECCE is mainly
regarded as a family responsibility,
and public funding represents no
more than 5% of the total, usually
as subsidies to privately operated
urban child care centres. In Cuba, the
government covers 100%.
An alternative to funding ECCE
programmes directly is for
governments to provide resources
COORDINATORS’ NOTEBOOK: ISSUE 29