Education Counts

Early Childhood Education

Participation in high quality ECE has significant benefits for children and their future learning ability. ECE can positively impact literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills well into the teenage years. ECE also encourages the development of cognitive and attitudinal competencies, and leads to higher levels of achievement and better social outcomes.

ECE Participation has been identified as a key factor in supporting vulnerable children which has led to its inclusion in the Better Public Services Programme, launched in 2012. This Programme aims to increase participation in early childhood education to 98% of all new entrants by 2016

Identical information is available by regional council  and territorial local authority through the Know Your Region pages.

Alternatively a large amount of early childhood education participation data is available from our statistics pages. See ECE Participation.