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This document aims to support policy dialogue in Brazil on the reform of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in 2024, looking into the following areas: 1. Why ECEC matters for stronger social and economic outcomes in Brazil: Brazil has demonstrated economic resilience in the context of the pandemic, but its potential for further growth remains untapped. With changing demographics and rising inequality, Brazil must address the challenge of revitalising its economy. This requires Brazil to adopt a comprehensive strategy to increase productivity, labour market participation and fiscal responsibility across government sectors while addressing gender disparities and social inequalities. Enhancing social policies and improving education quality and equity is key to this. A strategic investment in early childhood education and care (ECEC) can support achieving these goals. 2. How some OECD education systems are supporting access to and quality of ECEC: Over recent decades, research innovations and social changes have converged to make policy attention to ECEC widespread. Policy makers worldwide recognise the range of advantages of ECEC, and in this context, major trends have consisted of expanding enrolment in and strengthening the quality of ECEC. Furthermore, as countries are concerned about early life poverty and aim to level the playing field among children from the early years while early years policies are fragmented in many countries, efforts aim to better co-ordinate ECEC policies with other social and family policies. These major trends shape OECD countries' early years policies, although they have led to various approaches depending on countries' institutional, cultural and historical contexts. The policy directions developed in this section can inform Brazil's ECEC policies for the future. 3. Which policy directions taken by some OECD countries can inform Brazil's efforts to strengthen access and quality of ECEC? Brazil's ECEC policies are strongly anchored in legal frameworks and have been guided by the well-established role of the State to guarantee education for children from zero to five years old. As a result, Brazil has a comprehensive ECEC system and several of the main pillars for ensuring equity and quality of ECEC are already in place. These include emphasising universal access, compulsory education at age 4, and a curriculum framework for the early years. The major question for Brazil is how to strengthen its ECEC policies to ensure that they deliver better social and economic outcomes. With rising inequalities, increasingly diverse populations, remaining gaps in labour market participation and increased attention to well-being in most OECD countries, this question is at the core of their policy agendas. This document highlights some policy directions from OECD countries to inform Brazil's future ECEC policies. At a high-level, the following policy directions have been identified: • Ensuring equal access to ECEC. While Brazil's enrolment in ECEC is high in the years just before entry into primary education, it remains low for children under age 3, with gaps in participation in ECEC according to socio-economic background and location. OECD countries have increased public expenditure on ECEC to alleviate direct barriers relating to high family costs, lack of places, and distance to ECEC settings. Efforts also aim to address the indirect barriers to ECEC participation, such as those relating to a lack of trust or awareness regarding the programmes' availability and their benefits as well as preference to maintain children at home, for instance through an outreach network of professionals. • Strengthening the quality of ECEC. While data on the quality of ECEC in Brazil is lacking, there are signals of differences in quality within the country regarding teachers' qualifications and infrastructure and risks of low quality in some instances. Research underscores the importance of process quality. OECD countries aim to support process quality by implementing a research-based curriculum framework, attracting and retaining a high-quality ECEC workforce, and developing a quality assurance and improvement system. • Developing a co-ordinated and holistic approach to support children and their families in the early years. Ensuring the long-lasting effects of ECEC investment requires a co-ordinated approach involving parents, other social and health institutions as well as primary schools. As Brazil is advanced in these various policies separately, there is potential to strengthen linkages to reinforce outcomes, a direction taken by several OECD countries. • Strengthening the governance and infrastructure of early years policies. As in many other OECD countries, the organisation of ECEC policies is complicated with multiple layers of responsibilities and a plurality of actors. Strengthening the governance of early years policies can help achieve more cost-effective outcomes. • Developing data at individual and system levels for the early years. Data is needed at the level of children, families and ECEC settings to better adjust services to meet needs, as well as at a system level to monitor the effect of policies and steer the system towards improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the size and composition of government budgets, social spending and taxation in Brazil and South Africa.