Nursery World - World leaders told to invest more in the early years

World leaders are being called on to invest more in the early years as new research shows less than 2 per cent of the global aid budget goes to pre-primary education.

The report reveals how much money donor countries spend on early years aid, PHOTO Theirworld

The latest analysis from global children’s charity Theirworld reveals that aid to post-secondary education, which it says primarily benefits those from wealthier backgrounds, is 37 times larger than spending on pre-primary education.

Based upon data reported by donors to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), It tracks whether donors are meeting TheirWorld’s recommended target of investing at least 10 per cent of their education aid budget on pre-primary education.

The analysis provides an update to the charity’s 2021 report, ‘A Better Start?’, which ranked donors’ performance on pre-primary education and early childhood development, with data up to 2019.

Findings from the latest research reveal:

Of the world’s top 30 donors to education, seven do not spend a single cent on pre-primary education, including the Netherlands, Australia, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.
The US, France, Denmark and Germany are among the 16 countries that commit less than 0.5 per cent of their education aid budget to pre-primary education. The UK devotes 0.8 per cent, closely behind the United Arab Emirates (1 per cent), Finland (1 per cent) and South Korea (1.5 per cent).
Only Unicef meets Theirworld’s recommended target of investing at least 10 per cent education aid budgets in pre-primary education, at 30.1 per cent. It is followed by the World Bank (7.4 per cent), New Zealand (3.9 per cent), Canada (2.9 per cent) and Belgium (2.4 per cent).
While the overall share of education spending going to pre-primary increased by 107 per cent from 2015 to 2020, the $209 million invested in the early years still only accounts for 1.2 per cent of overall spending in education. Aid donors need to be spending around eight times more to reach Theiworld’s recommended 10 per cent target.

Recognising that early years education alone is insufficient, the report also looks at investment in early childhood development (ECD), incorporating health and nutrition. It finds as a proportion of total aid, ECD investment decreased from 3.8 per cent to 3.3 per cent between 2015 and 2020.

Theirworld president Justin Van Fleet said, ‘Tragically, many millions of the world’s most disadvantaged children are missing this window of opportunity. They are not receiving the nutrition or health care they need, growing up exposed to violence, polluted environments and extreme stress. They miss out on opportunities to learn and are deprived of the stimulation that their developing brains need to thrive.

‘When children miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, they pay the price in lost potential - going through life with poor physical and mental health; struggling to learn and, later, to earn a living. Failing to give children the best start in life perpetuates cycles of poverty and inequality.’

To send a ‘powerful message’ to world leaders that children who miss out on early years learning fall behind even before they start primary school, the charity is to launch a major global campaign on early years in 2023.