people and planet

11
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In 2014, 44% of children were enrolled in
pre-primary education worldwide
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globally in 2014 and 58% in South-eastern Asia) but more
likely to not be registered. A variety of programmes
have learning components, not all of which are purely
educational. As a result, some countries struggle to
capture the full scale of provision.
Fourth, the willingness and capacity of government to
expand pre-primary education provision has been limited
in some countries. In many poorer ones, the intake
rate into the first grade of primary school has been
consistently in excess of 100% of the relevant population.
One explanation is an absence of pre-primary classes
to absorb the demand (Crouch, 2015). Without preprimary
access, parents enrol their children in primary
classes to improve their school readiness, but they are ill
prepared for them.
These challenges affect the understanding of the
real levels of participation in early childhood learning
programmes, as a comparison of different indicators
also shows.
The most common indicator with the widest country
coverage is the pre-primary gross enrolment ratio,
which is the number of children enrolled in pre-primary
education as a percentage of the population of children
in the relevant age group.
TABLE 11.1:
Distribution of countries by pre-primary education duration
and starting age, and whether it is free and compulsory
Duration (years)
Total
1 2 3 4
Starting age (years)
3 - 25 103 20 148
4 5 34 6 - 45
5 5 8 - - 13
6 1 - - - 1
Total 11 67 109 20 207
Free 14 27 30 8 79
Compulsory 30 15 5 0 50
Free and compulsory 22 12 4 0 38
Sources: UIS database; GEM Report team calculations.
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In 2014, the global gross enrolment ratio was 44%,
considerably lower than in 2012 as a result of a large
downward adjustment to the estimate for India. Indeed,
Southern Asia is the region with the lowest participation
rate at 18.5%, followed by sub-Saharan Africa (21.5%) and
Northern Africa and Western Asia (29%). Much higher
rates are observed in Latin America and the Caribbean
(73%), Eastern and South-eastern Asia (76%) and Europe
and Northern America (85%).
A variant of the indicator considers enrolment not only
in pre-primary but in all early childhood education
programmes. Among the 148 countries with data
for both indicators, the median value increases by
3 percentage points when accounting for these
programmes. This includes 92 countries where there is no
difference between the indicators but also 23 countries
where the difference exceeds 20 percentage points: in
Namibia, the enrolment ratio more than doubles, from
21% to 55%, while in Indonesia, it increases from 58%
to 95%. This raises the question whether other early
childhood education programmes are consistently being
captured across all countries.
The Pacific is the region with the highest gross
enrolment ratio, 98%. This is somewhat misleading,
however, and gives a good example of the indicator’s
weakness. As the gross enrolment ratio value for
Australia is not reported, the regional value is imputed.
When all early childhood education programmes were
taken into account, however, Australia reported a
gross enrolment ratio of 216% because its pre-primary
education age lasts only one year (4-year-olds),
compared with two years for New Zealand (3- to 4-yearolds)
and three years for Papua New Guinea (3- to
5-year-olds).
An alternative indicator is the net enrolment ratio: the
number of children one year younger than the primary
school entrance age who are enrolled in pre-primary
education as a percentage of the population of that
age group. This indicator is an improvement because it
tries to control for the differences across countries by
2016 • GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 207