Blog by Professor Mathias Urban, Dublin City University
When does education begin? There is no magical date, say, when a child reaches compulsory school age, that marks the beginning of education. Any purposeful interaction between an adult (educator) and a child is educational (that includes changing diapers!). Taking this as a vantage point and ethical stance, I suggest, takes us to some fundamental elements that define ‘education in the broadest sense’:
- Education begins at birth, and should be recognised as a right
- Education is more than ‘schooling’
- Education, care, and well-being are interrelated and inseparable
While this is valid for any phase of education, it is particularly relevant for early childhood education and care. Among early childhood educators, advocates, and activists there is broad consensus about the importance of a holistic understanding of what Siegfried Bernfeld referred to as the ‘sum-total of societal reaction to the fact of ontogenetic development’.
- International frameworks supporting early childhood education
International policy documents and frameworks reflect a growing understanding that education and care should be recognised as every child’s right from birth. A notable example of this is the ‘General Comment no.7’ to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child published in 2005. It states:
The Committee interprets the right to education during early childhood as beginning at birth and closely linked to young children’s right to maximum development
(article 28).
More recently, the ‘Tashkent Declaration and Commitments to Action for Transforming Early Childhood Care and Education’, adopted by the UNESCO world conference on early childhood care and education in 2022, reiterates the position of a necessary right to education and care, from birth.
- The reality of unequal access
While consensus is growing and the professional and political discourse increasingly adopts a language of rights, the reality on the ground for children and families can be quite different. Access to early childhood services is highly unequal between countries and global regions and, importantly, within countries.
On a global scale, we are far from achieving the target set in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, that every child will have access to at least one year of pre-primary education. The picture is even more bleak when it comes to services for the youngest children and their families. In short, while there is agreement on the importance of education and care from birth, there is no statutory, enforceable right to early childhood education and care in international law. That is until now.
- A new milestone in 2024
In July 2024 the United Nations Human Rights Council, at its 56th session in Geneva, adopted a resolution that has the potential to change the unsatisfying status quo and enshrine the right to early childhood education in international law (together with the right to free secondary education, which is also absent).
Following an initiative led by Luxembourg, the Dominican Republic, and Sierra Leone (and supported by a large number of countries, many of them in the Global South), the resolution establishes an open-ended intergovernmental working group that will focus on the possibility of adding an amendment to the UN convention on the Rights of the Child. If successful, the amendment would take the form of an ‘optional protocol’ (a legal instrument) to the Convention; it would
(a) Explicitly recognise that the right to education includes early childhood care and education;
(b) Explicitly state that, with a view to achieving the right to education, States shall:
(i) Make public pre-primary education available free to all, beginning with at least one year; [and]
(ii) Make public secondary education available and free to all
(Article 1)
- Children’s participation in international lawmaking
The resolution has a second remarkable aspect: it makes it explicit that the intergovernmental working group must:
ensure the meaningful participation of children, in an ethical, safe, and age-appropriate inclusive manner, and in particular to give children the opportunity to express their views on the topic and substance of the proposed optional protocol, to facilitate their expression, including through child-friendly information, to listen to children’s views and to act upon them, as appropriate;
and further
Requests the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to ensure appropriate resources to support the participation of children, from all five regional groups, ensuring that they have easy access to relevant premises, and to make the discussions fully accessible to children and to persons with disabilities
This is the first time that children’s participation has been guaranteed in the elaboration of new international law—which in itself marks remarkable progress!
As work begins on the development of the possible optional protocol, it is our task as early childhood advocates to engage with states and national governments to ensure support for the process and the eventual adaption of a universal right to early childhood education and care.
