Building Strong Foundations for Life

Executive summary

The International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS) is the largest survey of its kind in the world, designed to provide a rich picture of children’s early development. What makes IELS distinctive is its focus on outcomes at age 5, alongside its simultaneous measurement of a wide range of developmental outcomes. Uniquely, IELS combines direct assessments of children’s skills - through engaging, play‑based tasks delivered on tablets - with indirect measures gathered from parents and teachers, offering a well-rounded understanding of early learning and development.

More than 23,000 children participated in the second cycle of the study (IELS 2025) from eight jurisdictions featured in this publication: Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan), Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil), England (United Kingdom), the Flemish Community (Belgium), Korea, Malta, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates. The report provides evidence to inform efforts by policymakers, education leaders and early childhood practitioners to build strong foundations for life for all children.

How five-year-olds are faring

• Children in Korea and England (United Kingdom) achieve high scores in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy. Children in Korea also perform strongly in executive function domains, such as mental flexibility. In emergent literacy and emergent numeracy, gaps between high- and low-performing children are relatively large in the United Arab Emirates and Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan), and relatively small in Korea, the Flemish Community (Belgium) and the Netherlands.

• The quality and composition of early education settings attended by five-year-olds account for a sizeable share of the differences in their early learning and development outcomes. On average, 36% of the variation in children’s scores in foundational learning domains, and 22% of the variation in scores in executive function and social and emotional development domains, are attributable to differences between these settings.

• Large shares of children with strong outcomes in one dimension of early learning and development also show strong outcomes in other dimensions, and the same holds for weaker outcomes. Policies to support children with relatively weak early skills need to address multiple dimensions at once.

Equity gaps

• At age 5, girls outperform boys across the three dimensions of early learning and development assessed in IELS 2025. Gender gaps are more pronounced in social and emotional development, less visible in foundational learning, and often larger among those with weaker skills.

• Large socio-economic gaps are evident in learning and development outcomes by age 5. On average, socio-economically advantaged children score between 60 and 70 points higher in emergent literacy and emergent numeracy than disadvantaged peers. Socio-economic gaps are smaller, but still consistent, in executive function and social and emotional development domains.

• Learning and development gaps between children with different immigration and language backgrounds are small compared to socio-economic or gender gaps, particularly after accounting for children’s socio-economic status.

• The perceptions of parents and teachers about five-year-olds’ cognitive and motor skills, socio-emotional skills and global skills generally reflect the same socio-demographic gaps that emerge in children’s assessments.

Home environments

• The quality of home learning environments varies markedly by socio-economic status, but what parents choose to do with their children matters. Children whose parents spend more time engaging with them in educational activities have stronger outcomes in emergent literacy, emergent numeracy, and in some social and emotional development domains, on average. Supporting disadvantaged families in providing rich home learning environments can promote better outcomes and reduce inequalities.

• For children aged 5 and under, books outperform screens when it comes to learning. Among a range of home learning activities on which IELS collected information, reading to children from a book shows the strongest associations with children’s outcomes in several domains. Meanwhile, more than half of the children in the study were reported to use a digital device daily, but digital practices were weakly and occasionally negatively related to children’s outcomes.

• Children whose parents are strongly involved in their early education settings at age 5 have higher scores than peers with less involved parents in many domains, particularly in social and emotional development. This relationship holds after accounting for socio-economic status. Policies that strengthen family-school connectedness in the early years could benefit all children.

Early education

• Children who start early childhood education and care (ECEC) or school at an earlier age are more likely to have positive learning outcomes at age 5. This association is most visible when comparisons are made between categories of starting age of participation, which tend to reflect the structure of ECEC programmes.

• The positive relationship between length of participation in ECEC or school and outcomes at age 5 is stronger for emergent literacy and emergent numeracy than with executive function and social and emotional development domains.

• IELS 2025 finds no evidence that participation in ECEC or school is more beneficial for socio-economically disadvantaged children. Given greater participation among advantaged children in most jurisdictions - and its general positive impact on children - ECEC and early schooling may not currently have the opportunity to mitigate socio-economic gaps in early learning and development. Addressing gaps in early participation and ensuring consistently high-quality provision could help ECEC fulfil its potential for reducing inequalities.

• On average across jurisdictions, about one in ten children in IELS 2025 were reported by their parents to have experienced early learning or early social, emotional or behavioural difficulties, with this being higher among socio-economically disadvantaged families. Children exposed to more risk factors are more likely to receive special supports, suggesting these supports adequately target the most vulnerable children.