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Recession should spur spending on preschooling, says Unicef expert

Liz Gooch

Governments should invest more in early childhood programmes during the global financial crisis, a senior adviser for the UN Children's Fund said this week.

'In times of severe economic crisis, investing in children's development should become the first priority,' said Nurper Ulkuer, head of Unicef's early childhood development programmes. 'This is because children are the most vulnerable and investing in them is the most effective way of stopping the self-perpetuation of poverty in the next generation.'

Dr Ulkuer, who addressed an international conference on early childhood education and care this week, said early childhood programmes were among the least costly education programmes to implement.

'Investing in children is increasingly seen as having the most valuable long-term sustainable impact on developing human capital,' she said. 'A wealth of studies on cost-benefit analysis point to the fact that programmes investing in early childhood development have a high rate of return and can generate considerable cost savings for government.'

She said the economic crisis would have the greatest impact on poor families and it would be even more crucial that young children were supported by good quality early childhood programmes.

Dr Ulkuer, who said children should receive two years of pre-primary education, said US President Barack Obama had continued investing in early childhood programmes and urged other countries to follow his example.

According to Unesco's 2007 Global Monitoring Report, 35 per cent of preschool-age children in developing countries in East Asia and the Pacific attend education programmes. In South and East Asia, 32 per cent of children attend such programmes, while the figure drops to 16 per cent in Arab states. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded the lowest rates of early childhood education, with only 12 per cent.

Dr Ulkuer said urban poor and rural children were less likely to attend preschool, but 'if we are not targeting the most vulnerable children, we are widening the gap between the poor and the rich'.

She said it was vital that parents were involved in their children's early education and there was a need for a greater focus on social and emotional development as well as academic pursuits. 'We don't spend good quality time with our children. This happens with professional families the most.'

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