Your work on developing and/or strengthening the ECE strategies, activities, indicators and targets should be guided by a strong and comprehensive vision for the ECE subsector. This vision is not just about young children sitting on chairs in a classroom, but rather about setting the foundations of learning and development right – which means it is about quality and inclusive ECE.

This phase of the plan preparation process is an opportunity for you to advocate for and articulate your country’s aspirations for young children’s optimal learning and development. Consider the following when planning for and costing quality ECE:

• Curriculum: A developmentally appropriate, pedagogically sound and gender-responsive curriculum with an inclusive and holistic approach to learning helps enable children to reach their full potential. In particular, a play-based learning approach empowers children’s active and hands-on exploration of the world around them. 
• Teachers:Teachers are vital to provide young children with quality early learning experiences. It is therefore crucial that they are valued and well supported. This entails developing robust strategies for growing and supporting the pre-primary workforce (including strategies for achieving more a more gender balanced workforce). In the short term, greater numbers of teachers with lower initial qualifications can be hired to grow the cadre of teachers, compensating with investments in intensive continuous professional development and on-the-job mentoring. This should be coupled with a longer-term strategy for gradually upgrading teacher qualifications and retaining quality teachers. Furthermore, it is important that ECE teachers are qualified and trained in gender-responsive curriculum and pedagogy, as well as in universal design for learning principles.
• Family engagement: Parents/caregivers are children’s “first educators” and have a key role as advocates for and supporters of quality ECE.  Caregivers are a child’s core educator alongside ECE provision. Family engagement should therefore be prioritized in the Education Sector Plan (ESP). There should be a clear strategy for engaging and empowering families (including particularly engaging and empowering fathers/male family members and caregivers) as active participants in their children’s development and education – both at home and in the ECE settings. 
• Quality standards: Clear quality standards for the ECE subsector should be in place, with a functional framework for regular monitoring of ECE programmes across both public and non-state/private providers. A key quality goal should be to lower the pupil-teacher-ratio to no more than 20 children per teacher. 
• Budgeting: To ensure quality, it is recommended to dedicate at least 25% of recurrent pre-primary budgets to non-salary expenditures, so that key quality investments, such as teacher training, curriculum development, teaching and learning materials and quality assurance mechanisms can be prioritized.  Advocacy for prioritizing financing and budgeting for the ECE subsector is crucial, with attention to budgets that prioritize the most vulnerable, marginalized and disadvantaged children and families.
• Equity: The provision of quality ECE recognizes the disparities and inequalities that exist within a country (gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, refugee status, disability status, etc.) and how these factors affect a child’s early education (in both access to ECE and quality of ECE). The strategies for the ECE subsector should respond to the particular needs of different groups and address disparities. Prioritizing the most vulnerable, marginalized and disadvantaged children should be the starting point.
• Diverse models of ECE: The ECE landscape is complex, with multiple delivery mechanisms (state, non-state, religious, community-based, etc.). The length and frequency of ECE programmes also vary greatly. This complexity provides the opportunity to foster the development of flexible and innovative approaches and programmes that can complement mainstream public provision. This helps support the children who are most vulnerable to exclusion from traditional public or private programmes.
• Transition to early primary grades: The transition from ECE to primary school is a big step for all children. A seamless and stress-free experience at this stage can influence children’s next steps in their educational and personal growth journeys. Quality transitions help ensure that that the positive impacts of early education are carried over and last through primary school and beyond. Quality transitions are those that are well-prepared and child-centered; guided by trained ECE and primary staff collaborating with one another; anchored in appropriate and aligned curricula and available assessment of child development; and connected to family and community engagement.
• Communicate Cross-Cutting Priorities such as Crisis, Gender and Inclusion When Providing Inputs for Simulation Models: Unless simulation models are really detailed, they do not always provide gender disaggregation (unless it's an explicit target built into the model), may miss out additional considerations for marginalized groups such as children with disabilities, and tend to be focused at the national level.  If the ECE TWG has specific policy priorities and related strategies and activities to address the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable – including young children affected by crisis, gender equity issues, and ensuring inclusion – cost and financing data to address these groups will need to be provided to costers and planners.  Where data is unavailable, these priorities may be communicated so that they are considered when developing the model and considering the resulting scenarios, to the extent possible.

During the planning process, is important to ensure ECE strategies and activities are crisis-sensitive.  This means that the ECE strategies and activities identified and included in plans and programmes are able to “reduce risks and strengthen preparedness and response capacities at individual [including parents and caregivers], school, community, national and sub-national MoE and government levels” (for the source of this information and further reading, refer to UNESCO’s 2020 Crisis-Sensitive Educational Planning).

Consider the following questions to ensure Education Sector Plans (ESP), including the ECE components (i.e. ECE strategies, activities, their indicators, targets and costs), are crisis-sensitive:

If “no” to any of the above, consider the human technical capacity and financial resources available and needed to ensure risk mitigation and management efforts - including contingency planning - is part of the Education Sector Plan (ESP) or programme response or design.  The Education Sector Plan (ESP) or ECE components of the plan may need to be revisited and revised.

Refer to GPE, UNGEI and UNICEF’s (2017) Guidance for Developing Gender-Responsive Education Sector Plans (ESP) (Module 7: Selecting Strategies and Interventions to Address Gender Disparities), which includes a table with a series of evidence-based strategies and interventions for advancing gender equity in education. This table, adapted below as questions for ECE stakeholders to consider, may support ensuring that prioritized ECE strategies are consistent with emerging, promising best practices for advancing gender equity in education.

The Education Sector Analysis (ESA) Volume 3, Chapter 11 includes Learning and Quality Supply-Side considerations and example questionnaires which may be adapted for ECE to assess systems’ capacity for implementing inclusive interventions which will help develop robust, inclusive strategies and activities for young children as well as identify the costs.