The Power of Research and Stakeholder Collaboration in Enhancing Early Childhood Care and Education in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

The early years of a child's life are crucial in laying the foundations of learning and development that shape life trajectories [...

Promoting Equity in Access to Quality Early Childhood Education in China.

This paper reviews the Chinese government's efforts and progress towards ensuring equitable access to quality early childhood education (ECE). It begins with an overview of the Chinese context and analysing the reasons for a policy focus on ECE in recent decades. Thereafter, from a historical perspective, it critically reviews policies pertaining to enhancing access to and the quality of ECE in China since 2010.

Global tracking of access and quality in early childhood care and education.

Investments in early childhood care and education (ECCE) have contributed to a growing demand for internationally comparable data. Yet data on access to quality ECCE are not routinely collected in many countries, leading to limited information on equitable access to ECCE, quality of provision, and the impact on learning and wellbeing outcomes. This paper outlines the current status of global measurement of access to quality ECCE and identifies issues with definitions, availability, and accuracy of ECCE data across countries and outlines paths forward.

Measuring and forecasting progress in education: what about early childhood?

A recent Nature article modelled within-country inequalities in primary, secondary, and tertiary education and forecast progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets related to education (SDG 4). However, their paper entirely overlooks inequalities in achieving Target 4.2, which aims to achieve universal access to quality early childhood development, care and preschool education by 2030.

Early child development in low- and middle-income countries: Is it what mothers have or what they do that makes a difference to child outcomes?

Child developmental theories and a large body of literature underscore the importance of both home and preschool influences on early childhood outcomes. We leveraged data from UNICEF'S Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, a nationally representative international household survey that has collected cohort comparable information on children's early development in over 118 low- and middle-income countries since 1995. We focused on data from 216,052 3- to 4-year-olds (106,037 girls) from 28 countries that had undertaken at least two surveys from 2010 to 2018.