Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

0120CHAPTER 2Education for All Global Monitoring ReportHigh-quality carein the early yearscan act asa springboard forsuccess in schoolEarly childhood careand educationGoal 1: Expanding and improving comprehensiveearly childhood care and education, especially forthe most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.‘Five- and six-year-old children are the inheritorsof poverty’s curse and not its creators. Unless weact these children will pass it onto the nextgeneration like a family birthmark.’These remarks by United States President LyndonB. Johnson (1965) retain a powerful resonance.Early childhood can create the foundations for a lifeof expanded opportunity – or it can lock children intoa future of deprivation and marginalization. There isstrong – and growing – evidence that high-qualitycare in the early years can act as a springboardfor success in school. In turn, education providesvulnerable and disadvantaged children with achance to escape poverty, build a more securefuture and realize their potential. The past decadehas witnessed rapid and sustained increases in thenumber of children entering primary school in theworld’s poorest countries. Yet every year millionsof children start school carrying the handicapthat comes with the experience of malnutrition,ill health and poverty in their early years.For many that experience starts, quite literally,in the womb and continues through the early years.Maternal undernutrition and the failure of healthsystems to provide effective antenatal support,along with safe delivery and post-natal care,contribute to child mortality. They also help transmiteducational disadvantage across generations.Malnutrition before children enter school is anotherformidable barrier to education. Apart fromthreatening lives, it robs children of the opportunityto develop their potential for learning. That is whythe eradication of child malnutrition should beviewed not just as a development imperative inits own right, but as a key element in the Educationfor All agenda.Effective early childhood care and education cangive children a better chance of escaping whatPresident Johnson called ‘poverty’s curse’. Whilemuch has been achieved, the monitoring evidenceset out in this section suggests that far more has tobe done. To summarize some of the key messages:Malnutrition needs to be recognized as both ahealth and an education emergency. Malnutritionis damaging the bodies and minds of around178 million young children each year,undermining their potential for learning,reinforcing inequality in education and beyond,and reducing the efficiency of investment inschool systems.Improved access to maternal and child healthcare should be seen as a high priority foreducation, as well as for public health. Chargingfees for basic services is locking millions ofvulnerable women out of health systems andexposing their children to unnecessary risks.As in the education sector, the elimination ofuser fees should be treated as a high priority.Governments need to tackle inequality in accessto early childhood care. Those in greatest need ofearly childhood care – and with the most to gainfrom it – have the least access. In both rich andpoor countries, parental income and educationheavily influence who attends pre-schoolprogrammes, pointing to the need for greaterequity in public provision and financing.This section is divided into two parts. Part 1reviews progress and the current status of somekey indicators of child well-being and nutritionin developing countries, and highlights the stronglinks between maternal and child health. Part 2provides a snapshot of access to early childhoodprogrammes across the world, along withevidence that these programmes can play animportant role in equalizing opportunity andovercoming marginalization.Malnutrition and ill health —a ‘silent emergency’ in educationWith some notable exceptions, governmentsacross the world have failed to accelerate progressin combating child hunger. And with the sharphike in global food prices during 2007 and 2008,and the economic downturn pushing more childreninto poverty, a picture that was already bleak hasbeen deteriorating.Retarded growth in the womb, early-childhoodstunting and anaemia are not typically viewedas mainstream education issues. The evidencestrongly suggests that they should be. Each ofthese conditions can have profound andirreversible effects on a child’s ability to learn,undermining the potential benefits of education.42