
The United Nations has declared 24 January as the annual “International Day of Education.” It provides a fitting moment to reflect on how early childhood education is too often ignored at the international level and is yet to be made universally accessible around the world. But thanks to a new initiative at the United Nations, the importance of early years education will get more global attention in 2025, and the UK should play an important supporting role.
For the past 76 years, international law has been first and foremost focused on guaranteeing children a human right to free and compulsory primary education. This emphasis may have been appropriate in the 1940s, when fewer than half of the world’s children were enrolled in primary school. Even the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the main international children’s rights treaty, requires states only to make education free for all children at the primary level.
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