In many low- and middle-income countries too few children benefit from early childhood education – and the poorest suffer from high levels of exclusion

Among low- and middle-income countries where fewer than two in three children attend organized learning one year before the official primary entry age, the average participation gap between the richest and the poorest 20% is 48 percentage points. It exceeds 60 percentage points in Benin, Cameroon, Mali, Nigeria and Pakistan, while it reaches the highest level in North Macedonia, where 91% of the richest but just 12% of the poorest benefitted from organized learning opportunities in 2019.