Early childhood education: questions of quality

The number 77 million has often been emphasised in the mid-term progress reports on Education For All goals. As we pass the halfway point between the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 and the year – 2015 – by when all children are supposed to have free primary education, 77 million is how many of the world’s children are still not in school.

But this emphasis risks distracting us from a fundamental concern: if those 77 million children could be made to attend school for five years, how many would nonetheless still be functionally illiterate at the end of it? It has become increasingly clear since 2000 that the goal of universal primary education may not be as meaningful as originally assumed: when primary education is not of adequate quality, to make it universal is not only pointless but a waste of money.

The question of quality as children make the transition from their homes to primary education therefore runs through this edition of Early Childhood Matters.