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 SDG 4 targets. However, it overlooked Target 4.2, aiming for universal access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education by 2030. This omission matters because of extensive early brain, cognitive and socioemotional development and growing evidence that early learning yields large impacts on later education and lifetime wellbeing. We overview this evidence and present new analyses illustrating the medium- and long-term implications of early learning: (1) associations between pre-primary participation and adolescent mathematics and science test scores in 73 countries and (2) costs of inaction from not making pre-primary universal in terms of forgone lifetime earnings in 134 countries. We find considerable losses—comparable to or exceeding current governmental education expenditures as a share of GDP—especially in low- and lower-middle-income countries. To attain SDG 4 and reduce inequalities post-COVID, prioritizing quality early childhood care and education, including policies that support families to promote early learning, is essential.