Why is Early Childhood Education Important for Girls?
Research shows that access to and participation in ECCE programs is critical to closing gender achievement inequities and improving the holistic development of girls. Currently, 31 of the 58 million children not enrolled in school are girls.¹ Despite the substantial global advocacy for increasing enrollment of girls in primary education and the tripling of enrollment of children in ECCE over the past three decades, girls remain underrepresented in ECCE programs.² This gap is widest in developing regions of the world with a patriarchal societal structure. For example, in Kenya 68% percent of the child population are not accessing early childhood education, and most of these children are girls.³ According the UNICEF (2015), South and West Asia has the widest gender gap of out-of-school children; 80% of out-of-school girls are unlikely to ever start school compared to 16% out-of-school boys in the region.
