During the July 2020 webinar organized by UNESCO on “Ensuring the quality of learning and wellbeing for young children in the context of the COVID-19”, HRH Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands proposed that UNESCO convene an innovative dialogue to reflect on common actions, reinforce collaboration, and work together on a Global Partnership Strategy (GPS) for Early Childhood Care Education (ECCE).
As a follow up — and under the personal leadership of the UNESCO Assistant Director General for Education and HRH Princess Laurentien — UNESCO is organizing two dialogues:
- Technical Session on 16 December 2020 — The dialogue will enable experts to discuss key issues, challenges and actions for ECCE and build a consensus regarding the annotated outline of the ECCE/GPS and its key components.
- High-level Session on 28 January 2021 — The insights from the technical session and subsequent workshops/ consultations will result in UNESCO along with country partner representatives, producing the draft GPS, which will be presented during the high-level segment.
The Global Partnership Strategy will be finalized and endorsed by the countries and key partners in the course of 2021. An action plan to implement GPS will be developed. It may include information on flagships such as professionalization of ECCE teachers and educators, financial target for ECCE, normative instrument to be adopted, burning issues to be addressed such as Education for Sustainable Development, Artificial intelligence, access to quality learning, intersectoral coordination as well as monitoring and evaluation frameworks.