Peer-reviewed article
Measuring and forecasting progress in education: what about early childhood?
Linda Richter, Jere Richard Behrman, Pia Rebello Britto, Claudia Cappa, Caroline Cohrssen et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper critiques a recent Nature study for overlooking early childhood education in modelling progress towards SDG 4 education targets. The authors present evidence that early childhood development and preschool participation have substantial long-term impacts on adolescent test scores and lifetime earnings. Using data from 73 countries, they show that pre-primary programme participation is associated with better mathematics and science outcomes. The paper estimates the economic costs of not making preschool universal, finding losses comparable to or exceeding current government education spending in many countries, especially in low- and middle-income nations.
Key points
- Pre-primary programme participation is associated with improved adolescent mathematics and science test scores across 73 countries
- The costs of inaction on universal pre-primary programmes amount to forgone lifetime earnings comparable to or exceeding current government education expenditures as percentages of GDP
- Early childhood care and education is critical for SDG 4 achievement but was entirely overlooked in a recent major modelling study
- Early-life learning has large impacts on subsequent education and lifetime wellbeing
- Low- and lower-middle-income countries face particularly substantial economic losses from not prioritising early childhood education
Limitations
This paper presents associations between pre-primary participation and later test scores, but does not establish causation or control for confounding factors that might explain both preschool attendance and later achievement. The cost-of-inaction estimates rely on assumptions about the earnings impact of early education that may vary by context.
Abstract
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. This is an important omission because of the substantial brain, cognitive and socioemotional developments that occur in early life and because of increasing evidence of early-life learning's large impacts on subsequent education and lifetime wellbeing. We provide an overview of this evidence and use new analyses to illustrate medium- and long-term implications of early learning, first by presenting associations between pre-primary programme participation and adolescent mathematics and science test scores in 73 countries and secondly, by estimating the costs of inaction (not making pre-primary programmes universal) in terms of forgone lifetime earnings in 134 countries. We find considerable losses, comparable to or greater than current governmental expenditures on all education (as percentages of GDP), particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. In addition to improving primary, secondary and tertiary schooling, we conclude that to attain SDG 4 and reduce inequalities in a post-COVID era, it is essential to prioritize quality early childhood care and education, including adopting policies that support families to promote early learning and their children's education.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Universal access to quality pre-primary programmes and early childhood care and education
- Population
- Children in 73 countries for test score analysis; children in 134 countries for economic analysis
Key finding
Pre-primary programme participation is associated with improved adolescent mathematics and science test scores in 73 countries
Richter et al. · Prof. Linda Richter (OpenAlex works) · 10 Sept 2021