Every parent understands the importance of the first few years of a child’s life. How children’s needs and abilities develop at incredible speed, and how much they benefit from reliable, nurturing and affordable care. It’s simple, as simple as child’s play.
But in the UK and around the world, this fundamental necessity of giving children a good start in life is suffering from lack of investment and lack of interest from our leaders.
This has been the case for some time, but right now the cost of childcare in particular has become a major concern. To take a global look at the issue, Theirworld commissioned a survey, conducted by Hall & Partners, of more than 7,000 parents and carers with children under primary school age in the UK, US, the Netherlands, India, Brazil, Turkey and Nigeria.
The findings were particularly bleak in the UK, where 23 per cent of parents said they had either quit a job or dropped out of their studies to avoid childcare costs - a higher proportion than in Brazil (17 per cent), Turkey (16 per cent) and Nigeria (13 per cent).
A depressingly high 74 per cent of UK parents said they found it difficult to meet childcare costs, but the numbers were high everywhere - 52 per cent in India, 57 per cent in the Netherlands, 59 per cent in Nigeria, 68 per cent in the US and Brazil and 72 per cent in Turkey.
Parents are being forced into choices they should never have to make. Not just ‘can I afford childcare’, but ‘will my child be better off at home for the whole day?’.
There is truly a global crisis in early years services, but it is about so much more than cost. Wages and training for carers tend to be poor, making the profession unattractive as a long-term option. The economic hardship caused by the pandemic is forcing carers out of the profession into better-paying opportunities. That exodus, along with rising running costs, is forcing nursery schools to close. Children’s welfare and potential is being damaged.
Parents and care-providers know this and have made their feelings clear in protests in multiple cities around the world last year.
The task now is to make sure that politicians and decision-makers fully grasp the problem too, which is why today [April 12] Theirworld is launching the Act For Early Years campaign, calling for quality early childhood care and education for every child.
We will work with care providers, parents’ groups, community groups, civil society and international agencies to persuade governments and donors to unite under a single banner to improve the lives of the world’s youngest children.
It is time for governments and policy-makers to wake up to the evidence that investing in the early years is one of the best decisions they can make, improving health outcomes, income levels, economic growth and social cohesion. They must act on the knowledge that 90% of brain development occurs in the first five years, and patterns of learning and behaviour are set for the future, that we cannot afford to get this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity wrong.
The first and most urgent task is to work towards providing early childcare and education for the 349 million children – more than half those who are of pre-primary school age – who currently do not have the access to good quality childcare, including 175 million not enrolled in any form of early education.
All too often, early years investment is treated as a private issue for families to solve, rather than a core investment in a country’s prosperity. Spending on the early years is for the most part woefully low, even in major powers like the UK and the US.
This will require a radical transformation by our leaders about how they regard the early years, which must become an active priority, properly invested in, and not just a passive commitment.
Alongside universal access to affordable, quality childcare, #ActForEarlyYears is calling for investment in a fully-trained, qualified and funded early years workforce. We want to see 10% of education budgets invested in early childhood development. We are proposing the first International Financing Summit on the Early Years by 2025 to kickstart this transformation and prioritise the needs of marginalised children.
There is early momentum on our side. There are growing calls for early care and education to be treated as part of a country’s essential infrastructure, like hospitals, highways and railways, or, indeed, primary and secondary schools.
Across the world, communities are organising for change and parents are recognising that they have a voice in this most personal and public of issues, and that politicians are beginning to listen.
The under-fives cannot voice their needs for themselves. It is up to us to do it for them.
Sarah Brown is Chair of Theirworld and Executive Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education