News

Regional Early Childhood Care and Education Conference in the Arab States

25 May 2023

Last update:1 June 2023

Background Information

The World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) was held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from 14 to 16 November 2022. Organized as a category II intergovernmental meeting, the Conference was the first high-level intergovernmental education event following the Transforming Education Summit (TES) held in September 2022 in New York, and an integral part of the efforts in 2022 to mobilize political will at the highest levels to transform education throughout life.

The Conference provided a platform for diverse stakeholders to discuss promising experience, practices, innovations, challenges, and lessons learned in pursuit of the ECCE agenda at country and cross-national levels, especially Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.2. which commits Member States to “ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education” by 2030. Participants acknowledged the relative neglect of ECCE in many national and international policy agendas on education, and the inadequate progress made towards SDG Target 4.2, recognizing that inequalities and disparities in development and learning start early and persist throughout life. Access to inclusive and quality ECCE was strongly reaffirmed as an important enabler of wellbeing and holistic development, foundational and lifelong learning, gender equality and social equity, and sustainable development, providing all children with the foundations they need to reach their full potential.

In the Arab region access and enrollment in ECCE remains low especially to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged and in countries suffering from multi-faceted crises. The quality of ECCE programs and lack of skilled and qualified workforce remains a challenge in many Arab States. However, over the past ten years, some countries have shown progress in addressing ECCE issues and in considering young children as right holders by applying the Convention on the Rights of the Child holistically in their ECCE planning and policies.

In Tashkent 14 Arab countries participated in the WCECCE. The issues of the region were well voiced and highlighted in the conference and declarations.

As follow up to the Tashkent Conference, UNESCO in partnership with UAE, the Sharjah Private Education Authority (SPEA), Sharjah Education Academy (SEA), Sharjah Supreme Council for Family Affairs, and Sharjah Child Friendly Office will organize a two-days regional ECCE conference in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates from June 4 to 5 2023. This event will be an opportunity for Arab States to exchange on increasing and improving investment in ECCE as an essential and integral part of their strategies for attaining lifelong learning societies and sustainable development.

The 216th UNESCO Executive board approved a resolution submitted by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen calling for operationalization of the Tashkent Declaration as well as calling for increasing support and investment on qualitative ECCE policies and programmes.

The provides a set of guiding principles and strategies around four key policy areas: i) Equitable and inclusive quality ECCE services for all; ii) ECCE personnel; iii) Innovation for advancing transformation and iv) Policy, governance and finance. It sets commitments for action for transforming ECCE in the coming 10 years. The Tashkent Declaration was adopted unanimously by all participating Member States with new commitments around i) encouraging at least one year of free and compulsory quality pre-primary education for all, and progressively increasing ECCE provision, ii) revalorizing ECCE personnel, and iii) increasing financing for ECCE to a level sufficient to achieve SDG 4.2 working towards the allocation of at least 10 per cent of education expenditures to pre-primary education.

Objectives

The regional ECCE Conference in Sharjah aims to:

Take stock of the progress of the region towards achieving the SDG 4.2 target and other early childhood related SDGs targets.
Exchange knowledge about key enablers, emerging research results, good practices, and innovations to put in place and scale up quality ECCE policies and programmes.
Identify opportunities, develop, and agree upon on a set of priorities and strategies to accelerate SDG4.2 progress and increase investment in ECCE on the part of governments and their partners using Tashkent Declaration to monitor ECCE national benchmarks.
Strengthen regional partnership and solidarity to advance ECCE agenda.
Explore Sharjah experience in ECCE.

Agenda

The Conference will highlight four areas that are integral to strengthening ECCE in the region:

Inclusion, quality and well-being: Curriculum and pedagogy; equity and inclusion; building a strong foundation; ECCE in emergencies; school readiness and the role of assessment.
ECCE workforce and caregivers: ECCE teacher and care staff training systems (including attraction, recruitment, and gender disparities); professionalization (certification, licensing, career advancement, coaching); supervision and leadership; ECCE workforce in the non-state sector; parenting.
Programme innovations: Taking advantage of neurosciences to advance the ECCE (early brain development); technology and artificial intelligence (including screen time and ethics of AI); designing innovative learning practices and spaces; alternative models of ECCE provision; greening ECCE.
Policy, governance and finance: Data, monitoring and evaluation; policy and legal frameworks (formal, non-formal, informal, 0-3/3-6/6-8); financing and partnerships; quality assurance frameworks and systems; whole-of-government approach, multisectorality and coordination.