Public support for early childhood education and care (ECEC) services helps achieve a range of policy goals. Public investment in ECEC simultaneously enhances child development and helps children acquire the necessary skills to support their future lives, while it also supports parents in their daily quest to balance work and family commitments. As women traditionally engage most in care work, such supports particularly facilitates women’s labour force participation and are thus crucial to achieving greater gender equality in employment participation.
The extent to which children participate in pre‑primary education (often children aged 3 to 5 inclusive) varies across countries (Figure 4.6). Over the 2010‑20 period, net enrolment rates in pre‑primary education in Asia/Pacific economies increased steadily in about three‑quarters of the countries with available data. Pre‑primary enrolment ratios doubled in Bangladesh, Lao PDR and Uzbekistan and almost tripled in Azerbaijan. Gender gaps in ECEC participation are small (Figure 4.7). Girls in Indonesia and Hong Kong (China) are more likely to participate in ECEC services than boys, and boys are more likely to attend ECEC programmes in Nepal, Pakistan and Tonga.
Results of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have shown that 15‑year‑old students who had attended pre‑primary education perform better on PISA tests than those who did not, even after accounting for their socio‑economic backgrounds (OECD, 2011[1]). For the few countries in the region for which data is available, higher rates of ECEC participation in 2013 are associated with higher scores in the 2022 OECD PISA reading and mathematics assessment (Figure 4.8).
