Early Childhood Education is an investment in our children’s future

As we have discussed in previous pieces on Early Insights, the science and economics behind early learning are clear (and continuing to become clearer). The early years are one of the key drivers of outcomes in life and provide the base of important life skills such as resilience, emotional regulation, socialisation, and more.

Despite the importance of this period, in the past, we have invested much more heavily in primary and tertiary education. Meanwhile, research, such as that of Professor Heckman, shows that the highest rate of economic returns would come from investments in children at a younger age.

Recently, we have seen the early years start to get a renewed focus in politics and the media. In America, we have seen broad support for many aspects of Biden’s American Family Plan, which includes initiatives such as subsidised childcare and family tax credits. In the UK, the Family Hubs model of Andrea Leadsom received funding from the recent budget to support families with children under three. And we have also seen articles focusing on early childhood in media outlets such as The Economist and the Guardian.

With the assumption that governments are beginning to wake up to the importance of investing in our children’s future, I am leading the creation of an article series highlighting three key areas for focus:

1. Families play an incredibly important role and need to be supported: Families are the first and most important teachers that a child has in life. Families must be supported to provide the basic needs that a child needs, which would require raising millions of children out of poverty. Families must also be supported to spend quality time together and to create amazing educational experiences at home. Feeding the bodies and stretching the minds of the next generation starts in the home, and investments must be made to enable families to create these experiences.
2. The focus should be on the child, rather than the parent: The issue of childcare is often focused on how it allows parents to re-enter the workforce. While this is an important reason, the focus should be placed on the child. When a child is in group care, there is much more happening than just being looked after until their parent finishes work. Group care during the early years of a child’s life plays an extremely important role in their development. One example of how this framing can affect policy — focusing on the parent would lead to increases in the number of hours of care per child while focusing on the child would lead to investment in increasing the quality of existing hours spent in care.
3. Government should incentivise and partner with other stakeholders who can innovate and support: Government alone cannot solve the many varied challenges facing the early childhood sector. Creating a system that supports all children (no matter their situation) to have the best start in life will require many stakeholders coming together to tackle these issues. Governments should be thinking about how to incentivise and partner with other stakeholders. If the various stakeholders from organisations, early childhood providers, medical providers, families, and government can work together to create an integrated and connected system then all children will be better off.

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