Achieving universal access to quality pre-primary education under the Sustainable Development Goal 4.2 is not an easy feat. To accelerate progress towards this goal, there is an urgent need to elevate the focus on early childhood education (ECE) so that it is systematically integrated or strengthened within national budgets and cycles of education sector planning and policy implementation.

To support countries with mainstreaming ECE into education sector planning processes, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and UNICEF co-led the development of the ECE Accelerator Analysis and Planning Toolkit, as part of the Better Early Learning and Development at Scale (BELDS) initiative.

As a global, practical e-resource, the interactive toolkit can play a critical role in countries’ efforts to strengthen ECE systems and scale up quality ECE, so that their young children can have the early learning opportunities that they deserve.

A quick look at the ECE Accelerator Toolkit

The ECE Accelerator Toolkit supports and expands BELDS’ innovative approach to strengthen national capacities to effectively plan, cost and finance, and monitor ECE programs. It aims to:

• support countries in consultatively developing and mainstreaming ECE plans into the broader education sector plans and budgets; and
• build capacity in basic ECE data analysis, prioritization, planning and costing for enhanced overall subsector development.

While the online toolkit is free and available to the general public, the main target audience consists of country stakeholders and development partners whose work involves policy-setting, planning, implementation and management of ECE. These include:

• ECE actors (such as preschool directorate staff from ministries of education, development partners who support ECE or serve as coordinating agencies, local education group members, civil society organizations and private sector partners, etc.);
• planning, policy, financing and management stakeholders (from ministries of education, public administration and finance, responsible for planning and financing; education sector planning; ECE policy-setting; programming; financing and management of ECE, etc.); and
• any other organizations that accompany and provide technical assistance to governments throughout the national education sector planning and implementation cycles.

Informed by the BELDS pilot country experiences and expertise of global partners, the ECE Accelerator Toolkit was developed through a year-long consultative process with dozens of stakeholders.

Starting with resources helpful during education sector analyses and moving to sector plan development, the toolkit thus follows the “journey” that countries go through as part of their planning and implementation cycles. The sections of the toolkit are anchored in the steps and milestones of this journey.

The tools in the first iteration of the toolkit focus primarily on the first two planning stages – education sector analysis and education sector plan development. Additional tools across the other stages of the cycle (implementation and budget execution, annual sector reviews, etc.) will be developed and added over time.

What’s next?

Conceived as a user-friendly and knowledge-sharing “living platform”, the content of the toolkit is available open-source for downloading, translation and contextualization. Key tools are being translated into French and Spanish, and will be made available this spring.

Furthermore, improvements, revisions and other demand-driven tools and resources will be added over time – this will happen gradually as the toolkit becomes widely used and lessons around its use emerge. In particular, the toolkit will be further tested and expanded in the context of the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange project (Scaling up BELDS).

We welcome and encourage government and development partners’ use of the toolkit and their contributions to this dynamic resource. We are eager to receive feedback on how the tools are being used, ideas for improvements or additions, as well as any other suggestions and comments for refining this toolkit.

Upcoming events and webinars

Please join us at a high-level launch event for the ECE Accelerator toolkit on February 16, 2021 at 9 am EST. Co-organized by GPE, UNICEF and ECDAN, the event will provide insights into what worked in the BELDS approach, share reflections from global actors on the importance of strong subsector planning for pre-primary education, and highlight how partners have contributed to and are utilizing the toolkit.

This will be followed by a series of practical webinars around specific sections, tools or topics of the ECE Accelerator Toolkit, with the view of creating a community of practice for learning exchanges. The first webinar is planned for 9.00 am EST on March 2, 2021.

We hope that many of you will use the ECE Accelerator Toolkit, participate in the webinars and become active members of the global community of practice. Our vision is to engage more countries and partners in the approach of strengthening ECE through sector planning processes, and learn from countries’ ongoing efforts and successes.

Together we can make universal access to quality pre-primary education a reality for all children!