Who bears the cost of early childhood education and how does it affect enrolment? 

The bottom line: Early childhood education is becoming a more important element of the national educational systems of OECD countries. Countries have developed a variety of different institutional setups and financing systems to promote participation in early childhood education. Local governments are key to financing this level of education, while the private sector also plays a major role in some countries, in particular by paying for ancillary services. Participation in early childhood education is broadly related to the amount of resources made available by the government and the private sector, and to the way those funds are allocated. 



Early childhood education can no longer be seen as a luxury; it is neither just a welcome add-on to those education systems that can afford it nor dispensable to those that can’t. The evidence of its benefits for both individuals and society as a whole is just too overwhelming to justify the kinds of timid funding policies that are revealed in the data.