[In this issue of Early Childhood Matters, an open-access journal published bythe Bernard van Leer Foundation, Mark Roland and Michelle Neuman of Results for Development, share three principles to improve the sufficiency and effectiveness of financing for early childhood workforce development.]
The issue is critical because early childhood provision is expanding rapidly in low- and middle-income countries: for example, global pre-primary rates increased from 32% to 47% between 2000 and 2015 (UNESCO, 2018). Yet service quality is not always improving. Workforce calibre is not the only determinant of quality, but it is key (International Labour Organization (ILO), 2012; UNESCO, 2015). Recent research reviews consistently find that well-trained educators improve the quality of early childhood care and education programmes in developing countries (Engle et al., 2011; Behrman et al., 2013; Rao et al., 2014). From Bangladesh to China to Costa Rica, there is evidence of a positive relationship between better-educated and trained personnel and both programme quality and children’s outcomes (Rao et al., 2014; Neuman et al., 2015).
