The United Nations has declared 24 January as the annual “International Day of Education.” It provides a fitting moment to reflect on how early childhood education is too often ignored at the international level and is yet to be made universally accessible around the world. But thanks to a new initiative at the United Nations, the importance of early years education will get more global attention in 2025, and the UK should play an important supporting role.
For the past 76 years, international law has been first and foremost focused on guaranteeing children a human right to free and compulsory primary education. This emphasis may have been appropriate in the 1940s, when fewer than half of the world’s children were enrolled in primary school. Even the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the main international children’s rights treaty, requires states only to make education free for all children at the primary level.
But today, we know more about early education’s indispensable role in child development, school readiness, and mitigating inequality. Pre-primary education has a positive impact on young children’s successful transition to primary school, later educational progress and completion of secondary schooling, and increases the likelihood of better employment opportunities beyond.
It’s therefore concerning that about half of the world’s preschool-age children are not participating in pre-primary education, depriving them of this critical opportunity for development. Too often, it’s the cost to parents of such education that becomes the barrier to a child’s enrollment.
That’s why last year a group of 49 countries from every region of the world supported a proposal brought to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva by Luxembourg, the Dominican Republic, and Sierra Leone. They agreed that later this year, all the world’s governments would be invited to draft a new treaty to explicitly recognize every child’s innate human right to early childhood education, including free public pre-primary education, beginning with at least one year. The proposed treaty would also recognize a right to free public secondary education for all children.
Research shows that in countries that guarantee one year of free pre-primary, 83 percent of 3- to 5-years-olds are developmentally on track for literacy, numeracy, social-emotional, and health milestones, compared with only 66.6 percent of children in countries without this opportunity. Universal free pre-primary education could therefore transform millions of lives.
The idea of a new treaty has already gained support from more than 50,000 UK citizens, who joined an open letter from youth activists Malala Yousafzai and Vanessa Nakate urging governments to make it a reality. Even more signatures from British early childhood educators and parents would be beneficial.
Although more remains to be done domestically to ensure all children benefit from quality early childhood education, the UK already exceeds the minimum requirements envisioned by the new treaty, through the provision of what is called “reception year” in England and Wales, and other benefits available to parents based on location and other factors, as well as free secondary education throughout the UK. So supporting the international initiative would require no extra government spending, while allowing it to showcase the UK’s increasing commitments to early childhood education as an inspiration to others.
Other members of the Commonwealth are both advancing early childhood education at home and supporting the international initiative at the UN, including the Bahamas, Botswana, Cyprus, the Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Malta, Nauru, and Sierra Leone.
For example, even though it is one of the world’s lowest-income countries, Sierra Leone enshrined free education in national law in 2023, legally guaranteeing 13 years of free schooling, from one year of pre-primary through secondary school—just like in the UK.
Minister for Development Anneliese Dodds and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson should announce that the UK agrees with these Commonwealth colleagues and supports the proposed treaty. The UK’s backing for a strong treaty would provide a valuable boost and inject momentum into the up-coming negotiations, affirming that children around the world deserve the same early learning opportunities as children in the UK. Since both ministers also have responsibilities for the women and equalities portfolio, they can further bring to their decision the understanding that access to pre-primary education also facilitates parents—predominately mothers—to return sooner to work should they want, or to otherwise participate in public life.
This International Day of Education is the perfect opportunity for the UK to re-commit to global leadership on education and envision a world where every child has access to the life-changing benefits of free education from pre-primary through secondary schooling.
