Early Childhood at the Heart of Educational Justice: Reflections on the GEM Report 2026
May 8, 2026
The recent publication of the Global Education Monitoring Report 2026: Access and Equity – Countdown to 2030 by UNESCO marks a key moment for the global education agenda. This is not just another report: it launches a new series “The Countdown to 2030” that invites us to critically rethink progress, gaps, and challenges towards achieving SDG4 and shaping a post-2030 education agenda.
The message is clear and, at the same time, deeply concerning: the world has made progress in expanding education, but it is failing to guarantee it as an effective right for all. In 2024, 273 million children, adolescents and youth remain out of school, and this number has increased in recent years.
In this context, early childhood care and education (ECCE) emerges as a decisive field. Not only as the starting point of learning, but as the first territory where inequalities are defined, and often consolidated.
Countdown to 2030: a new way of looking at education
The Countdown to 2030 series proposes an important shift: it does not merely measure outcomes, but combines data, national trajectories, and policy analysis to understand why some countries advance more rapidly than others.
This approach recognizes that there are no universal solutions and that educational progress is always contextual, complex, and deeply political. Within this framework, Chapter 3 of the report, dedicated to pre-primary education, provides key insights for understanding the present and shaping the future of ECCE.
Expansion with limits: real progress, incomplete rights
The report shows that early childhood education has expanded significantly over the past decades. Globally, participation has increased, and it is estimated that around 6 in 10 children have attended pre-primary education.
However, this figure must be interpreted with caution. The report itself warns that global indicators tend to overestimate actual participation, as a significant proportion of children enter primary education without having experienced pre-primary education.
Moreover, the pace of expansion has slowed since 2015, indicating that early gains have not been sustained.
From a rights-based perspective, this raises a central issue: the universalization of early childhood education remains an unfulfilled promise.
Early childhood: where inequality is produced, or challenged
One of the report’s most striking findings is that the largest educational inequalities are concentrated at the pre-primary level.
Access continues to be strongly shaped by structural factors such as socioeconomic status, place of residence (urban/rural), language, culture, and social background, disability or vulnerability conditions.
In regions such as Africa and Asia, increased participation has not been accompanied by a reduction in inequalities: the poorest children still have significantly less access than the richest. In contrast, Latin America has made important progress in reducing these gaps over recent decades.
This is a profoundly political finding: expanding access alone does not transform structural inequalities.
Policies and financing: progress without sufficient equity orientation
The report also reviews policies aimed at expanding access to pre-primary education, including transfers to families, expansion of public provision, and targeted programmes.
However, it highlights a structural weakness: fewer than 1 in 10 countries have a sufficiently strong equity focus in their education financing policies.
This means that, although policy instruments exist, they are not yet sufficient to substantially reduce inequalities. Public investment in pre-primary education remains low, and in many contexts, provision still relies heavily on non-state actors.
In other words, education systems are expanding but not necessarily doing so with justice.
Beyond education: the need for an integrated approach
The report reaffirms that the expansion of ECCE does not depend solely on education policies. Factors such as women’s participation in the labour market, social protection policies, and broader economic conditions directly influence access.
This reinforces a key idea for OMEP (World Organization for Early Childhood Education): early childhood requires integrated policies where care and education – educare - are inseparable.
An agenda in dispute: early childhood towards 2030 and beyond
The Countdown to 2030 is also an invitation to rethink the political horizon of education. And within that horizon, early childhood holds a central place.
However, the 2030 Agenda itself sets a limitation that must be critically examined: the global commitment focuses on ensuring at least one year of pre-primary education before primary school.
While this represents an important step forward, it also establishes a low political ceiling for the realization of the right to education in early childhood.
From a rights-based perspective, this is clearly insufficient. Development, learning, and well-being do not begin at age five, but from birth. Reducing ECCE to one preparatory year before school perpetuates a limited vision that constrains its transformative potential.
Overcoming this threshold is one of the major challenges ahead: moving towards universal, integrated, and high-quality systems that cover the entire early childhood period.
In this process, financing becomes a decisive factor. The report shows that, despite some progress, financing systems do not sufficiently prioritize equity, particularly at the pre-primary level.
This raises an unavoidable responsibility for governments: it is not only about expanding coverage, but about investing in a deliberate and redistributive way in the earliest years of life.
A call to action for the right to early childhood care and education
This report reinforces a fundamental conviction: there will be no social justice or sustainable development without strong and sustained investment in early childhood.
For those working to advance the right to early childhood care and education (ECCE), this implies:
Recognizing ECCE as a human right from birth.
Increasing public financing that is sufficient and equity-oriented.
Promoting integrated and intersectoral policies.
Strengthening monitoring and knowledge production.
Supporting governments in building universal, inclusive and culturally relevant systems.
Above all, it requires sustaining a clear political position: investment in early childhood care and education is not a future return strategy, but a present obligation of States within a human rights framework.
With only a few years left until 2030, the challenge is enormous, but so is the opportunity: placing early childhood care and education at the center of public policy will not only accelerate progress towards SDG 4, but also help shape a more just, inclusive and truly transformative post-2030 agenda.
Author: Mercedes MAYOL LASSALLE, Professor in the Master’s Programme in Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires, Past President of OMEP (2020–2025), Member of the OMEP World Executive Committee
Views expressed in this blog are those of the author/s’ alone. Publication on this blog does not represent an endorsement by PEHRC of the opinions expressed.