Expanding Early Childhood Care and Education: How Much Does It Cost? A Proposal for a Methodology to Estimate the Costs of Early Childhood Care and Education at Macro-Level, Applied to Arab States. Working Papers in Early Childhood Development, No. 46

While the critical importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE) is undisputed, few developing countries are presently pursuing strong national policies to expand it. Thus, Goal One of the Education for All (EFA) agenda--"Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children"--is at risk of becoming a neglected area, even though it has the potential to contribute strongly to the achievement of other EFA goals. Many ECCE projects and programs exist throughout the developing world, and individuals knowledge about good practice and effective approaches is ever increasing, but the next step--translating this knowledge into action at national policy level--is a difficult one. A lack of transparency regarding the costs of national policies to expand ECCE seems to cause reluctance among governments and donors to invest in ECCE more substantially. It is against this background that this publication has been written. It builds on a paper commissioned by the office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Cairo in early 2006. Using the Arab States as their domain, the authors developed a model to estimate the costs of making early childhood services available to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. Inevitably, these estimations must rest on assumptions--translated into quantitative "parameters"--which are debatable. (Contains 3 figures, 19 tables and 37 footnotes.)