Giving early childhood education the final push | UNESCO

A child’s brain forms approximately 700 to 1,000 new neural connections per second.

“This is a level of neural plasticity that never occurs again later in life,” says Borhene Chakroun, UNESCO Director of Division for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems.

According to Chakroun, this is why the early years, from birth to age five, represent a once-in-a-lifetime window during which children’s brains lay the foundations for how they learn, live, and relate to others throughout their lives. 

Yet despite this – and all the benefits of early childhood education (ECE) – the sector still struggles to find its place in plans, budgets, and education systems.

“ECE is still invisible,” says IIEP education programme specialist Diane Coury. “It’s getting better, but it does not have the same representation as primary education. We’re less than five years away from 2030, and we need that final push.”

That final push, she argues, is a mix of greater and more equitable funding, as well as something more technical – the capacity to move ECE from the margins to the core of planning. In other words, ECE policies must be properly translated into core technical elements of Education Sector Plans, including costing, monitoring, and equity targeting.

To help bridge that critical gap, IIEP, UNESCO, and the Education Outcomes Fund offered an eight-week online course in early 2026. 

33 participants from 21 countries across Africa, North America, the Arab region, and Europe participated.