Review of ECE in Education Sector Plans and Analyses

• In Event: Strengthening early childhood education planning: introducing a new MOOC for ECE stakeholders

Proposal

In order to make tangible improvements in providing equitable access to quality early childhood education services, especially for the most marginalized children, education systems must have the capacity, resources and knowledge to mainstream ECCE into education sector plans and policies. This paper highlights the challenges in current education sector planning for ECCE by examining ECCE within current Education Sector Analyses (ESA) and Education Sector Plans (ESPs) globally.

This paper will summarize some of the key challenges to mainstreaming ECCE into the sector planning process. A stocktake completed by UNICEF identifies a lack of ECE data as a major bottleneck for meaningful inclusion of ECE in ESAs. Similarly, an analysis of 50 ESPs by GPE has highlighted challenges in ECE data, costing and financing, and planning within sector plans. By closely examining specifics of some of these global challenges, this paper sets the global demand for better capacity building within education sector planning for ECE, as well as the scope for the MOOC.

Author

• Christin McConnell, Global Partnership for Education