Mobile Creches: How Can Early Childhood Development Get The Right Funding

[00:00:00][music] Hi, I'm Niharanha and you're listening to Express podcasts. Early childhood development or ECD is one of the most critical investments a society can make.

[00:00:12]The right amount of care during the first few years of a child's life can influence lifelong health, learning, and productivity. [music] Access to quality nutrition, health care, responsive caregiving, early learning opportunities, and a safe environment during these formative years help children reach their full potential.

[00:00:31]However, achieving these outcomes requires sustained and adequate financing. Investments in early childhood services like preschool education and caregivers support often yield some of the highest social and economic returns. As part of our ongoing collaboration with Mobile Crushers, we bring to you the fifth and final episode of the series where we talk about the need for consistent and adequate financing for ECD which can in the long term translate into increased women's participation in the workforce, improved educational outcomes, increased productivity and a better future. To have this conversation, we are joined by Shiku Zongji who is the global technical lead at Early Childhood Development Action Network. She has worked extensively for early childhood development and rural development and has a background in comparative and international education. Shiku, every government talks about children being the future. Yet ECD allocations as a share of GDP or national budgets have remained stubbornly low for years. Is the real challenge simply finding more money? Or is it that governments often lack a clear road map to finance ECD effectively? What would it actually take to see investment move from political rhetoric to meaningful action?

[00:01:52]>> Yeah, thank you for that question and and really happy to be here. Just in May, we brought together about 300 people from 40 countries including India uh and mobile crushers was present at the meeting um in Kgali, Rwanda for the first ever global technical financing forum and early childhood. And honestly, this was the main question. This was the core question that sort of framed the three days we were there together. And I think the honest answer from an early childhood perspective is of course it's both. But the second part of the question is that is what nobody really talks about. So what I mean is we don't have a money problem in the abstract.

[00:02:31]You know a minimum package of one year of quality early childhood education for all children would cost on average I think less than 0.15% of GDP in low and middle inome countries. So that's not a lot of money.

[00:02:44]And the cost of inaction we have a lot of data that shows it's 8 to 19 times the cost of investing depending on the context. So the economics are overwhelming and but what we heard from governments in Kegali over and over again is that the financing chain in the system it actually breaks down at every single link in the system. So we have countries that have strong policies really strong ones but unfunded. We have budget lines that exist but they aren't executed. Early childhood spending is scattered sometimes across ministries of health, education, nutrition, social protection, but nobody can actually tell you the total because the system doesn't properly track it. So it isn't just about finding more money. Although that is an important piece of it, but it's the second piece around the systems that I think it's really important. So I would say three things. First, this is the work of uh system building. We have to figure out how to make early childhood visible in in the budgets. So creating codes, tags, tracking systems so that a ministry of finance can easily see what the country is spending on its youngest children and that's missing in most of the world. Second is the cost of services themselves. Most countries don't actually know clearly what it costs to deliver quality early childhood services and without that you cannot make a credible case for more funding um ever. So it's just that basic foundational work. And the third and I think this is why as a global community we're building this financing toolbox is to give our partners and governments a very pragmatic roadmap for financing. So it's not just about you know throwing more advocacy and evidence and policy makers. I mean we have a lot of evidence of why it matters and what I find often times is even if that is known I think where people get stuck is how do we actually identify where are the financing gaps? How do you match services with the right financing instruments? Often times you have instruments that are just not a right fit for the type of early childhood services we have. And then how do you build a credible you know realistic executable pathway from where we are and where we need to be. So looking at the short medium long term. So early childhood cannot survive on goodwill alone. We need the same kind of serious financial planning and execution that we give to infrastructure, to health, to defense. And that's the type of seriousness I think our field also needs to take. Right? And when financing is driven by short-term priorities or simple enrollment targets, quality, equity, and sustainability are often the first casualties. So how can governments make financing decisions that expand access while also ensuring resources reach the children and services where they will have the greatest long-term impact?

[00:05:25]>> Yeah, I think this is such an important question and I think this is the really core financing challenge and I know over the years we've had a lot of increase in just access and in fact UNICEF had published a really important report in 2019. And I know the data is a little bit out of date, but I think the core principles and the core messages are still true today. The report was called a world ready to learn and they laid it out very clearly that pre- primary education is so deeply underfunded globally relative to other education levels. Only about 6.6% of education budgets go to pre- primary and in South Asia I think it's almost 2%. And so what we're finding is that the internationally recommended benchmark for example from the Tashkin declaration you know which was done by UNESCO was 10%. And most countries are nowhere near that. So the fundamental problem is that pre- primary education is actually seen as competing with primary and secondary for the same pot of money because expanding access with equality we have so much evidence that shows that the outcomes we just don't get and in fact sometimes it's you know even goes in the opposite negative harm direction as well and on the inequities piece and in fact I think it was Sumitra from Mobile Crushes that was a very powerful voice at the conference about this is that are we scaling you know inequity for all or equity for a few like what are we doing here so I think there's a few things that we can consider first workforce we need to look at it as infrastructure you cannot deliver quality early learning without qualified supported fairly compensated educators early educators and I think you know Indian angi workers are a perfect example of this so the second is using financing to drive like how we design financing to drive equity and not just about expanding coverage.

[00:07:17]And third I would say is uh and this is something that came out in the financing forum very clearly is to stop separating the conversation about access from the conversation about quality. So every financing decision needs to ask like does this expand access and quality it's not an eitheror >> right and Shaku Early Childhood Development Action Network has worked alongside governments across Asia and other regions on strengthening ECD systems and financing. What common financing challenges have you seen countries grapple with? And what have you learned about the kind of practical support governments need to move from recognizing the importance of ECD to actually financing it effectively?

[00:08:04]>> Yeah. Um, so we work with many many countries all around the world and it's kind of shocking how the pattern is quite consistent. I think most of the governments will tell you that early childhood matters, but when you actually follow the money, the story is different. And I think the most common challenge with early childhood is I like to say like when it's everybody's priority, it's nobody's budget problem.

[00:08:31]You know, when everyone says yes, yes, yes, that's important, then it's nobody's responsibility. And again, as I previously said, early childhood because it sits across multiple ministries, health, education, social protection, nutrition, sometimes women's affairs, it belongs to everyone and it belongs to no one. So there's no single minister who loses their job if early childhood doesn't get funded. And if you compare that to let's say primary education, which often has a legal mandate and a dedicated budget, early childhood is competing with this like very structural inbuilt disadvantage that I think we need to think about how to shift that.

[00:09:05]The second challenge is on costing. For example, there was a diagnostic study done in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique and they found that the absence of any costly implementation plans was one of the main barriers to successful policy implementation um with adequate financing. So you can have the best policy in the world. I mean this seems so simple but if you don't know what it costs to deliver, you really cannot make that case to ministries of finance. I mean that's not how the ministries of finance operate. So just that basic thing. And third is is this fragmentation problem. So it's not just a government problem. So one of the things that we found at the financing forum and one of the chairs of the sessions said it really directly to the partners in the room like how can the early childhood community globally like stop contributing to the fragmentation.

[00:09:54]We have so many organizations they go into the same government officials with different frameworks, different apps, different piece of the puzzle, different reporting requirements, different project cycles. I think we have to look at ourselves like we ourselves are also part of the the problem. So I think what governments need is actually quite simple. what's very practical, hands-on, you know, doing the financing work, costing their services, tracking their spending, identifying realistic financing options, building those pathways that fit within the public financing management systems. And again, I keep going back to this global public good that we're working on, this financing toolbox. We tested it first with the government of Rwanda where we spent two days at the Ministry of Finance with 50 stakeholders from eight government institutions mapping financing gaps, testing it against real services. And so it's a working tool that's designed to be used by people who actually make budget decisions. So and one example, one insight from Burundi that I think captures the potential, they did something so simple, they did a cost benefit analysis that showed in Burundi specifically. So not taking global data, but that contextual data in Burundi for every dollar invested in early childhood, the country would gain $18 by 2050. And so when that evidence that was paired with the capacity building on public financing, the investments in early childhood tripled and it wasn't just the evidence, it was the evidence combined with the practical financing support. Right? And India has a very massive population of young children between the ages of 3 and six.

[00:11:26]Yet public investment in pre- primary education remains relatively modest as a share of GDP compared with many other countries. Looking beyond the headline figures, where do you think India's greatest opportunities lie to strengthen financing for early childhood development and what kind of financing approaches could realistically make the biggest difference? Yeah. So India is really fascinating because so much infrastructure already exists that we don't see in many other places. So as you mentioned ICDS is one of the largest early childhood program in the world.

[00:12:04]The national education policy recognized pre- primary within the formal education structure. So we have the platforms and the policy commitments. And so the question is like whether the financing architecture is matching the scale of the ambition that's there. And I want to be really upfront. I'm definitely not an India specialist and so the specifics of what will work obviously needs to come from Indian policy makers and researchers who understand you know the political economy the institutional landscapes but what I can share is what we're seeing globally that I think might be relevant for the Indian context um and I and I'd love to learn more as well so first is that I think countries that are making progress they are the ones that are finding the dedicated sustainable consistent revenue streams for early childhood ood rather than relying on only purely funding. So what I mean by that is relying just on annual budget allocations that fluctuate. So in the Philippines for example, it's a tax on casino earnings that supports funding early childhood. In a lot of US states, it's a tobacco settlements and lottery funds. But the principle of finding dedicated revenue streams, I think that's one. Secondly, India has been such a pioneer in some areas of innovative financing that are directly relevant. So the educate girls development impact bond in Rajasthan was one of the world's first. India has a CSR mandate that generates billions annually. Uh SEDI launched um you know one of the few like operational social stock exchanges globally. So the innovative finance infrastructure exists in India in ways that it doesn't in many other countries. And the question is whether the early childhood sector is positioned to connect to it. And right now I'm not sure where that is, but that's a real gap and opportunity. It's a big gap globally that the early childhood community and the social finance community aren't talking to each other enough. Third, and this is where, you know, I think what I'm starting to see emerging and again India is a leader in this given that you hosted the G20 a couple years ago where early childhood in India is fundamentally also a care economy question. And I know mobile pressures has been leading that edge also. So India is having a major national conversation about women's labor force participation and child care being super central to that and you know as we know pretty obviously if women can't access affordable quality child care they can't participate in the workforce effectively. So framing how can we reframe early childhood investment as an economic infrastructure conversation. So about workforce development, women's economic empowerment, human capital formation. So I think those open new doors that just early childhood programming alone doesn't. You know, how do we deepen our engagement in conversations with finance ministries, planning commissions and the private sector using that type of framing? And I think finally, India's federal structure creates such an interesting opportunity for state level experimentation.

[00:15:00]And I think states can innovate on financing in ways that the big juggernaut like federal system can't.

[00:15:08]And the best learnings and pilots and innovations we can then learn from that and scale that. And from what we see globally, the countries that make progress are the ones that stop treating early childhood as just a social program and start treating it as a natural development infrastructure. And finally, Shiku, if there was one piece of advice that you would want to give to governments, development partners, businesses, and philanthropists who genuinely want to increase investment in ECD, what would that be? And how can they move beyond simply calling for more funding towards making better informed financing decisions that deliver lasting impact for young children? what can early childhood development action network offer to support these efforts?

[00:15:54]>> So I think it one piece of advice or one insight that I think I've been repeating a lot is like changing the question from how do we find the money for early childhood and and for us to collectively and consistently be asking how do we build a financing system that ensures money flows to children reliably year after year. And that difference again as I've mentioned before is really really critical and I think this is the big shift in the global conversation.

[00:16:20]Finding money can often be one-time exercises. You get the grant, you fund a project, the project ends and then you start looking again. But building a financing system means creating the architecture, you know, the budget codes, the costing framework, the accountability mechanisms, like figuring out the domestic revenue streams that really makes early childhood a permanent protected part of how a country invests in its in its youngest uh you know in the foundation of human capital. And so for government specifically, I think the biggest shift would be joining the financing conversation that are already happening. Um so one of the big takeaways from our financing forum that happened in Rwanda, one of the powerful insights was that the money is flowing you know through debt negotiations, climate finance, resource revenues, social health, insurance reforms but most of the time early childhood is just not at those tables and then for development partners and philanthropies I would say they're so concerned with like wanting to fund you know direct services reaching the children reaching the numbers But what if they actually funded the infrastructure? So not just the programs, fund the costing exercises, the budget tracking systems, the public financial management reforms, the data systems, you know, those like that that glue, those building blocks that is, you know, they don't immediately translate to, you know, having reached X number of children, but really in the long term, this is what's going to keep the system working for children. And for business, I would say that early childhood is care economy infrastructure. When women can't access childare, businesses lose talent and productivity. This isn't corporate social responsibility. It's economic self-interest. I think the business case for investing in early childhood is as strong as a social case. Uh but we just haven't cracked how to do that, you know, at scale yet. And what the early childhood development action network, what we can offer is that we are the network that holds the complexity of the field together. uh we convene across sectors and geographies. We co-lead the innovative financing learning group with Brookings, the education finance network and the education outcomes fund. We're building this financing toolbox that would be a global public good for everyone to pilot and use and develop and you know we've worked with them. So we have a lot of resources and learning on offer and and wanting to also learn from countries and I think what I would say is 99 countries now have national policies for early childhood and I think that number might even be higher right now but the number of low income countries with national early child policies has increased by 48% just between 2018 to 2023. So the political will is growing and then what's lagging behind is really this financing architecture that can actually you know meet those ambitions, meet those needs and I think that's the gap that we all collectively want to close.

[00:19:15][music] You are listening to Shikuongji on Express podcasts. This episode was edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar [music] and produced by me Niharanha. You can find the links to our previous episodes with mobile crushes in the description.

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