Young children, sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Theirworld.

A new era of aid cuts and conflict threatens the educational lifeline of the world’s youngest learners, according to new research.

Latest figures show international aid for early years education was already falling before cuts to USAID stripped a further $745m (~£660m) from the global education aid budget.

A sharp drop in aid for pre-primary education may be the first sign that the international community is turning its back on the world’s most vulnerable children amid wider economic strain, a new report warns.

The annual donor ‘scorecard’, produced by researchers at the University of Cambridge for the charity Theirworld, reveals that the proportion of global education aid being committed to early childhood education – which was already well below international targets – has started to fall.

The report’s authors warn that the true picture could be far worse, as the latest available data are from 2023: the beginning of what they describe as a new era of ‘cuts and conflict’.

The scorecard tracks how much international aid is being spent on education for the critical early years, up to age five.

The researchers expected to see signs of a post-pandemic recovery in the latest figures, but instead found a decline: between 2022 and 2023, pre-primary education aid fell by $20m, to $250m in total.

As the report notes, however, these figures precede the Trump administration’s recent decision to axe 99% of basic education funding through the United States Agency for International Development, stripping $745m from the global education aid budget – which covers pre-primary funding as well as other areas.

Britain and Switzerland have also scaled back their spending commitments.

The report noted: “There are signs that others might be moving in the same downward spiral.

“While the effects of the latest cuts are yet to be felt, it is apparent that the aid landscape is rapidly changing.”

Urgently needed

Among numerous findings, the report highlights the scale of inequalities between young learners in the world’s richest and poorest nations.

In countries where pre-primary education aid is most urgently needed – such as Sudan and the Syrian Arab Republic – less than 20 US cents of aid were spent per pre-primary aged child in 2023.

As a comparator, average per-child spend in the mostly high income member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was just under $8,000.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the University of Cambridge, said: “This information comes from the very start of a period of both severe aid cuts, and escalating conflict in places like Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine.”

“The cost of these dual effects for children is likely to be immense. We know that the poorest and most marginalised children already lack access to crucial early childhood learning opportunities.

“That crisis will now deepen, if those with the power to save and change lives continue to turn inward instead.”

Critical developmental window

The case for investing in pre-primary education is well established. Research has consistently shown that the early years are a critical developmental window, influencing children’s future learning, health and life chances.

The World Bank has identified early childhood programmes as among the most effective investments governments can make to improve long-term outcomes.

Yet globally, provision remains limited. According to UNICEF, only 40% of children can access early childhood education and in parts of Africa and the Middle East the figure is closer to 25%.

Theirworld has long called for 10% of education aid to be allocated to the early years to rectify this. The target was endorsed by 147 UN member states in the 2022 Tashkent Declaration.

In raw terms, the total aid spent on pre-primary education in 2023 was the second highest since records began.

However, the $250m disbursed represented just 1.2% of global education aid, down from 1.4% the year before, and drifting further from the 10% target.

The report suggests this may be a sign of worse to come, as global aid spending overall also fell by 0.6%.

Received nothing

The limited funding for pre-primary education is also highly concentrated. Over half went to just five countries: Tanzania, Rwanda, Jordan, Bangladesh and Ethiopia.

Five of the 26 countries classified as ‘low income’ received nothing, and of the remaining 21 countries only Rwanda received support worth more than $5 per pre-primary aged child.

In Palestine, aid per pre-primary aged child equated to just $1.79, and in Ukraine it was just 14 cents.

Echoing previous reports, the new scorecard highlights the fragility of a funding landscape in which aid tends to be concentrated in the hands of a few donors.

The World Bank accounted for 57.3% of all early childhood education aid in 2023, but also cut its spending by 17.7%.

Support declined

EU institutions and UNICEF – who together accounted for much of the remainder – also reduced their spending allocations.

UNICEF and the Global Partnership for Education were the only major donors who met the 10% target, but even UNICEF’s support declined to the lowest level since 2017.  

Co-author Dr Asma Zubairi said: “Given that UNICEF is an organisation dedicated to children, this decrease is a cause for concern.”

With the United States in particular effectively abandoning education aid, Rose said that other major donors should urgently reaffirm their commitments and ring-fence support for the pre-primary years.

She added that this could be achieved, even in the context of broader economic pressures, by reallocating funds from post-secondary education.

In 2023, donors spent 24 times more on aid for post-secondary education than on pre-primary, much of which went to students from low-income countries studying in the donor nations.

Rose said: “Higher education clearly matters, but the balance is wrong. We need to be much smarter about whom we fund and how.

“Instead on focusing on young people who make it to university, we should be targeting those children who never make it out of the starting blocks.”