Somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a child who will never sit in a classroom. Not because it’s against her parents’ wishes. Not because there isn’t a school nearby that can be reached on foot. However, no one made any investments in her brain between the ages of 0 and 3, when it was most prepared to take in the world. The gap had already developed by the time she was old enough to attend elementary school; it was imperceptible, unyielding, and nearly impossible to bridge.
This type of discovery is often overlooked in scholarly journals and conference proceedings. However, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, has stated unequivocally for years that high school dropout rates can drop by as much as 40% in nations that make significant investments in early childhood development during the first three years of life. That statistical improvement is not insignificant. That is a generational shift concealed within a policy choice that the majority of governments continue to view as optional.
The mood among practitioners and researchers at the 76th OMEP World Assembly, which took place in Bangkok in July 2024, was somewhere between urgency and exhaustion. This is the kind of atmosphere that permeates a room when people have been correct about something for a long time but are still unable to get the rest of the world to pay attention. Under the theme “Right from the Start for ECCE: Step Beyond All Together,” delegates from over 60 nations convened, and the theme that pervaded almost every session was the same. The window is not very long. The investment is not taking place. Additionally, the effects are already evident in lifetime outcomes, dropout rates, and classroom settings.
The stakes are clear from UNESCO’s numbers. Approximately 251 million children and young people worldwide are still not attending school as of 2024. Despite an increase in primary and secondary school enrollment, the out-of-school population has decreased by just 1% over almost ten years. Even though more kids than ever before are starting school, the dropout rate, especially in secondary education, is unabated. In reality, only two out of every three secondary school pupils finish their education. It’s possible that a lot of people give up in the middle of their journey because their foundation wasn’t established correctly in the first place.
Neuroscientists have long maintained that the brain is being architecturally structured between birth and age three, not just developing. This is what OMEP’s research and the larger body of early childhood data support. These abilities, such as language acquisition, emotional control, and cognitive flexibility, don’t just show up when a six-year-old starts school. During those early years, they are either nurtured or neglected, and no amount of subsequent education can make up for a foundation that has been neglected. Dropout rates are responding appropriately to nations that have recognized this and taken action, such as investing in family support networks, stimulation programs, nutrition, and trained caregivers.
The financial situation is still dire, and it’s difficult to ignore the disparity between how much governments say they value education and how little they actually spend on it at an early age. Low-income nations spent only $55 per student in 2022, while high-income nations spent over $8,500, according to UNESCO’s 2024 Education Finance Watch. Pre-primary education has the biggest financial gap of any level, according to UNESCO’s ECCE lead at the OMEP conference, and at least 10% of national education budgets should go toward it. The majority of nations fall short.
Observing these discussions in international forums gives the impression that early childhood investment is still viewed as social spending rather than as economic infrastructure. This framing is gradually changing, in part because it is getting more difficult to ignore the long-term cost data. Studies presented at events such as the OMEP assembly consistently demonstrate that economies suffer far more when young children are not educated than when they are. The benefits are not limited to test scores; they also manifest in lower rates of incarceration, lower healthcare costs, and increased participation in the workforce. Reducing high school dropout rates by 40% is not a soft social outcome. It has a big dollar figure affixed to it.
Some nations are demonstrating the concept’s efficacy. UNESCO reports that in recent years, school dropout rates have decreased in Madagascar, Togo, Morocco, Vietnam, Georgia, and Turkey. These are not wealthy countries with enormous budgets for education. Many of them have a more intentional focus on the years before formal education starts, on the children who are currently too young to be included in the 273 million out-of-school children, but who will become so if nothing changes.
The political timeline might be the most challenging aspect of all of this. Investments made in children between the ages of 0 and 3 do not yield results in a single election cycle. The payoff appears in data from a different government fifteen years later. Making that argument to a finance minister in the midst of an emergency is challenging. However, the numbers of dropouts are telling the story, the evidence is mounting, and it is now difficult to ignore OMEP’s conclusion. Education is not prepared for during the first three years. The majority of the world still views them as a waiting room, despite the fact that they are education.
