Significant learning gaps between disadvantaged and advantaged five-year olds – between those in the bottom and top quartiles of measured socioeconomic status as defined by parents’ education levels, occupations and household income – are evident across a range of cognitive and other indicators.

The size of this gap depends on the indicator, averaging eight months for mental flexibility and 20 months for socio-emotional skills – the latter being key in enabling children to adjust to and succeed in a school environment. The gap for emergent literacy, one of the best predictors of later educational attainment, is already evident at 12 months. It must be closed quickly if disadvantaged children are to have a chance of doing as well as their advantaged peers. Most do not.

The older children become, the more intractable the inequities – and the harder it becomes to close the gap. Policy may therefore be better directed at closing the gap while they are still young, focusing on the needs of disadvantaged children before formal schooling begins, as well as in the first few years of school.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) provides a strong foundation for children’s learning and well-being – and it has a significantly larger positive impact on those from less privileged backgrounds. Participation in high-quality ECEC enhances the development of children’s cognitive, social and emotional, and self-regulatory skills at an early age. Evidence points not only to improved academic and professional outcomes later in life, but also to a lower chance of behavioural and emotional problems in adolescence.

Yet disadvantaged children are less likely than their more advantaged peers to participate in ECEC. Across OECD countries, 74% of students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds attended ECEC for at least two years, compared to 86% for advantaged children.

Policy that seeks to provide better access to good-quality ECEC could make a difference.

Disadvantaged five-year-olds who are resilient have a number of factors in common, the most significant of which is the quality of their home learning environments. This is determined by the nature and frequency of parents’ active engagement with their children, which plays a vital role in their children’s cognitive and social-emotional development.

Evidence points to the significant impact of parents and caregivers regularly reading books with their children, of having children’s books at home, and of having regular back-and-forth conversations with children.

Education leaders and policymakers can help disadvantaged children reach a similar level of development as their advantaged peers through nurturing stronger links between teachers and parents, and improving home learning environments, as well as better access to good-quality ECEC.

Policy analysis suggests that a stronger link between structures, people and processes is a mark of more responsive and resilient education systems – that is, those that align the many facets of the lifelong learning experience into a more cohesive whole.

Giving learners greater capacity and flexibility to determine their educational pathways according to their evolving contexts, interests and needs gives them the best chance of reaching their potential – maximising opportunity and therefore enhancing equity. This may require education systems to become much more dynamic in the face of the short- and long-term economic and societal challenges.

Some of the structural characteristics present challenges to better connecting pathways: in over half the countries and economies in different OECD surveys in 2020, pre-primary education (ECEC) was not compulsory and learners appeared to experience difficulties in transitions at different ages. In 21% of education systems, at least one-fifth of 25-to-29 year-olds were neither employed nor in education and training.

Education spending averaged 10.6% of total government expenditure in OECD countries in 2019, of which roughly three-quarters was directed at non-tertiary education. Specifically on primary education, this varied between 7.3% in South Africa and 1.5% in Germany (noting the variety of primary school systems and differences in absolute levels of economic output and government budgets).

Equity in education aims to create a level playing field for all children by supporting those who need it most. Bolstering pre-primary (ECEC) provision and home learning environments for disadvantaged children has significant benefits for children – and for the long-term resilience of societies and economies. But governments must make difficult choices on how much they want to allocate budgets to the provision of different aspects of education as well as other essential public services.