In time for Global Action Week, the EFA Global Monitoring Report team has released a new policy paper that focuses on ways of making sure that all children get a chance to attend pre-school. 157 million children were enrolled in pre-primary education programmes in 2009, the latest year for which figures are available. This is an increase of 40% since 1999 - but the gross enrolment ratio is still only 46%. In other words, more than half of the world's children don't get a chance to improve the linguistic, cognitive and social skills that are the foundations for lifelong learning.

The new policy paper points to striking evidence that equitable access to high quality pre-primary education markedly improves young children's readiness to succeed in primary school. It sets out action needed in six core areas to expand access to good quality pre-schooling, particularly for the disadvantaged, and to better coordinate pre-school education with early childhood care and with primary school.

Young children who are marginalized by poverty or other factors stand to benefit most from early childhood care and education, but across the world, they are the ones who have least access to it. Offering disadvantaged children better health care, nutrition and pre-schooling is one of the most urgent priorities on the Education for All agenda . You can download the new Policy Paper here.

And for more information about EFA Global Action Week on the theme of ECCE, see UNESCO's website.

The Report

In April 2000 more than 1,100 participants from 164 countries gathered in Dakar, Senegal, for the World Education Forum.

The participants, ranging from teachers to prime ministers, academics to policymakers, non-governmental bodies to the heads of major international organizations, adopted the Dakar Framework for Action, Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments and agreed upon six wide-ranging education goals to be met by 2015.

The Education for All Global Monitoring Report is the prime instrument to assess global progress towards achieving the six 'Dakar' EFA goals. It tracks progress, identifies effective policy reforms and best practice in all areas relating to EFA, draws attention to emerging challenges and seeks to promote international cooperation in favour of education.

The publication is targeted at decision-makers at the national and international level, and more broadly, at all those engaged in promoting the right to quality education – teachers, civil society groups, NGOs, researchers and the international community.

While the Report has an annual agenda for reporting progress on each of the six EFA goals, each edition also adopts a particular theme, chosen because of its central importance to the EFA process.

Vision Statement for the EFA Global Monitoring Report
The Report is funded jointly by UNESCO and multilateral and bilateral agencies, and benefits from the expertise of an international Advisory Board. During annual meetings, the Board discusses the scope and contents of the Report underway and provides advice on its future development.

Each Report is developed over a 12 to 18-month period. It draws on scholarship and expertise from governments, NGOs, bilateral and multilateral agencies, UNESCO institutes and research institutions. Research papers commissioned for each Report are available on the website.

The Report is submitted to the Director-General of UNESCO on an annual basis and considered by the High-Level Group on Education for All, whose members include government ministers, representatives of donor organizations, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations. Its role, as stated in the Dakar Framework for Action (paragraph 19), is to sustain and accelerate the political momentum created at the World Education Forum and serve as a lever for resource mobilization.

The Report is translated into the six UN languages and other languages so that its messages and findings may be widely shared.