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Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 4.2 calls for all girls and boys to have access to high-quality early childhood education by 2030. This global mandate establishes a new framework of accountability to increase access to preprimary education in low- and middle-income countries through measurement and reporting. As with other global indicators, however, the measurement of preprimary education access is more complex and nuanced than may be supposed. This data-oriented chapter delves deeply into the measurement of SDG 4.2 and explores the accuracy of the indicator being used: the adjusted net enrollment ratio, one year before the official age of primary entry. The chapter analyzes data from both education management information systems (EMIS) and household surveys to triangulate information about children’s access to preprimary education before they begin primary school. The analysis concludes that the indicator used to measure SDG 4.2 is overestimating access to preprimary education, because it includes large numbers of children who enroll in primary school before the official age of entry. This suggests that parents “vote for preschool” by sending their under-age children to primary school when access to affordable preprimary is limited. Implications for SDG measurement and preprimary policy are discussed.

This chapter examines the context for the implementation of the global commitment to early childhood education (ECE) within the framing of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) under SDG 4.2. We first define the concept of ECE as broadly understood in the field of education and in practice related to a focus on education of children. The essay adopts chronological age of children served outside of the formal school system, which has traditionally been recognized as basic education, to represent the population captured under ECE in both pre-school and pre-primary settings. UNICEF identifies those ages 3–6 to fall into this category. We present an exploration of the challenges and opportunities presented by multiplicity in multilateral agencies and other agencies driving the international initiatives around advancing ECE and the means by which they promote education opportunities for children. We offer a comparative perspective on the delivery, types, and funding mechanisms of ECE services in both developing and developed country contexts, which informs the possibilities for the realization of the SDG goal of inclusive quality education for all. An examination of the socio-cultural and economic context of accessibility to inclusive and equitable quality ECE is also presented. An overview of settings within which ECE is provided is interrogated within differing national contexts. We conclude with challenges and opportunities for sustained accountability, monitoring and evaluation of SDG 4.2 interventions from a comparative perspective.

Girls’ access to education has improved in many of the world's developing countries. These countries are striving to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) requiring them to provide gender equality, promote the empowerment of women, and establish universal primary education (UPE) by 2015. The success of UPE in achieving gender equality in enrollment in those countries able to institute it is encouraging. Where previously girls trailed boys in their ability to access education due to parent inability or reluctance to pay the costs, they are now entering primary schools in comparable numbers (UNESCO, 1999, 2006).

The primary school in any rural village is a significant and vivid institution. Its classrooms, playground, buses, staffroom, governing body, PTA committee, religious celebrations, educational visits and community events are a focus not just for village pride but for parental and social aspirations and tensions. Village schools are special local spaces, in which the bite is keenly felt of national education policies. They are sources and sites of friendships, rivalries and divisions amongst both children and adults; places where celebrations and disappointments occur on a daily basis; an important local employer and reliant on a range of committed volunteers. Village schools are genuinely lively and dramatic places.

But not in The Archers. The mostly invisible children of Ambridge simply board a bus to Loxley Barrett aged five, then mysteriously alight aged 11 at Borchester Green or the fee-paying Cathedral School. During those primary years Ambridge’s children, parents and listeners seem blissfully unaffected by tests, snow, bullying, crazes, curriculum change, poor teachers, brilliant teaching assistants, academisation, Ofsted inspections, fussy governors, budget crises or any other rural educational reality.

In this chapter we consider why primary education, a topic that dominates the lives and conversations of real village families from all backgrounds, seems to be of such insignificance to the inhabitants of Ambridge?

Purpose − This study illustrates how poor deployment and inefficient management contribute to poor usage of the Malawian school system's teacher resources.Methodology − The author uses data from Malawi's Ministry of Education Science and Technology's Department of Teacher Education and Development and the Education Management Information System to examine the supply of and demand for teachers. The data illustrate the relationships between teacher assignment and the need for teachers at the district, school, and classroom levels.Findings − Teacher assignment policies and practices in Malawi result in class sizes in the first three years of primary school that are much larger than optimal. Additionally, the prevailing shortage of teachers is about 25% worse than necessary because of inefficiencies in teacher deployment. For example, teacher shortages and surpluses often exist in the same districts.Research limitations − This study was limited by the poor quality of data maintained by the Malawian Ministry of Education and the teacher training colleges. While better data would elucidate and improve teacher deployment, existing data should more purposefully target assignment of teachers to schools with the greatest staffing need.Practical implications − Policy solutions identified include requiring minimum teaching workloads and clearer defining criteria for assignment of teachers to schools and grade levels.Value − By demonstrating the wide variations in student–teacher ratios at the district, school, and grade levels in Malawi, this study provides insight into ways in which prevailing policy and practice may compromise both efficiency and quality at each level.

In the Netherlands, childcare and primary schools are governed by two different systems of two ministries, and although these institutes are usually located nearby, there always have been low levels of cohesion with respect to institute-to-institute collaboration. However currently, there is a national trend in enhancing interprofessional collaboration (IPC) with the aim of inclusion and equity. This study focuses on getting insight into the differences in intensity of collaboration and how IPC is organized. A two-dimensional Child Centre Integration Model which accounts for the variations in the degree of IPC in child centres and gives insight into IPC at different levels and into conditions for intensifying IPC is presented. That Dutch education and childcare systems do not connect with each other is seen to be an important cause of the failure or complication of IPC. Because the systems do not connect at the macro level, we see struggles in the necessary normative dimension due to status differences (i.e., inequality between employees) and differences in funding and autonomy. Differences between public (education) and private (childcare) institutions also lead to difficulties when it comes to fostering closer collaboration. This chapter ends with key lessons for practice and policy, including the suggestion that one strong ministry for child affairs, including education and childcare, which stimulates an unambitious course at national level, is required. This course can then be translated at regional and local levels.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is mandated by the international community to collect, analyse and disseminate internationally comparable statistics on education, including those on and related to teachers. Based within a framework that emphasises quantity and quality issues for teachers, this chapter describes the current UIS international collection of teacher data, the policy options they intend to inform, as well as key limitations and challenges of the present data. In reaction to this, the chapter also presents UIS’s on-going developmental work related to the global data collection and statistics on primary and secondary teachers ranging from the measurement of current shortages, particularly in developing countries aiming to achieve universal primary education (UPE), to the expansion of an international framework that sheds additional light on teacher and teaching quality.

The purposes of this study are to explore children’s independent mobility, that is the degree to which children of different ages are allowed to make trips to school, friends, shops, and other destinations unaccompanied by adults within the Arab communities in Israel and to study the influence of the demographic and socio-economic characteristics, built environment, geographical location, cultural context, and risk perceptions on children’s independent mobility.

This study is based on a questionnaire given to children between 9 and 15 years old studying in 4th to 9th grades and to one parent or primary caregiver. The methodology of this study is based on descriptive statistics comparing independent mobility licenses and travel behavior of two school children groups: Arab and Jewish children. In addition logistic regression models were developed to study the influence of different factors on independent mobility such as: car availability, gender, age, social class, and so on. In order to examine whether children with independent mobility do more and have access to a wider range of activities than those who do not, a linear regression analysis was performed with the dependent variable being the number of unaccompanied journeys to the various activities in the weekend.

Results clearly show that boys were granted greater freedom in terms of mobility licenses, as were secondary school children compared with those attending primary school. Walking is still the main commuting mode to school. One of the important findings in this study is that children are not interested in walking. That is, regardless of the built environment and parents driving options, children prefer to be driven.

This study will provide essential information for the development of policies and interventions in urban planning, transport planning, community development, community safety initiatives, and health planning.

This study is among the first to examine levels of independent mobility among the Arab school children in Israel, as well as their participation in active transport (e.g., walking/cycling) during journeys to school and to other local destinations.

Therefore, this study will hopefully provide a baseline for future studies in this area and act as a catalyst for more research into independence and mobility, and how this impacts sustainability.

This chapter is about the modern (Western) educational regime, educational industry paradigm and schooling process, while focussing on statutorily imposed and legally enforced schooling as the main aspect of the hidden curriculum within a globalizing world.

It is about children's productive labour through schooling, whereby children's labour power is consumed, produced and reproduced on behalf of social formations under the capitalist mode of production (CMP).

The claim that a well-educated population is essential for development so that all societies share an interest in having children participate in schooling as much as possible is the central element of the Western education industry paradigm, the global appeal of which is reflected in how compulsory schooling has been embraced almost everywhere in conjunction with being heavily promoted within the ‘international community’ and widely endorsed by researchers, scholars and similar observers.

Contrary to Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle, the structure of schooling is not an identical to the structure of the workplace in that it entails compulsion, whereby schooling is as efficient and effective as possible in meeting the needs of the CMP.

The CMP benefits from the state having shifted confinement as a mechanism to force people to work onto schooling; or, from compulsory social enclosure, whereby schools increasingly resemble military and prison systems.

Compulsory social enclosure helps to ensure that children's productive capacity – or labour power – is enhanced to the benefit of the CMP, this being the major factor in accounting for its appeal and advance on the world stage, globally.