8 | Quality Early Learning
potential for expansion of some nonstate models may be limited by management capacity and the fragmentation of service provision, reinforcing the need for an effective public system to engage with nonstate providers. In sum, more and better investments are needed to make the most of ECE’s enormous potential and avoid repeating the same mistakes that led to the global learning crisis in primary education. Expanding access to ECE without sufficient quality constitutes an inefficient use of limited resources that may bring about negligible or even detrimental effects on learning (Britto, Yoshikawa, and Boller 2011; Howes et al. 2008). Although more resources and a systems approach are essential to ensuring the long-term stability and quality of ECE provision at scale, more child learning can be achieved if investment decisions are informed by the growing body of evidence on how to improve the effectiveness of ECE to nurture children’s ability to learn. In the face of resource and capacity constraints, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the most essential aspects of ECE should be prioritized first for ECE to expand effectively and promote learning for all children.
PROGRESSIVELY BUILDING SUSTAINABLE QUALITY ECE The rich body of knowledge synthesized in this volume and past experiences from countries around the world suggest that successful policy and program implementation to build high-quality ECE systems should be grounded on promoting child learning above other potential imperatives. Resources are always limited; thus, systems face trade-offs not only between the breadth and quality of coverage, but also across crucial elements of quality, and between short- and longer-term goals. For example, as ECE systems expand, they carry substantial infrastructure and other major recurrent costs, such as teacher salaries. These costs often make up a large percentage of ministry of education budgets, limiting resources for investment in curricula, materials, professional development, and other needs; conversely, an immediate need for learning materials may hold up investments in monitoring systems that help ensure the quality of ECE over time. As governments assess how much can be achieved in the short, medium, and long run, they should take care to consistently allocate resources toward promoting learning in ECE classrooms along the way. This section discusses ways to prioritize, sequence, and implement recommendations from the volume’s chapters to progressively build sustainable quality ECE at scale.
