Early years education from 0 to 3 in Spain: a proposal to reach the children who need it most

Every argument about social mobility eventually runs back to the first years of life. By the time a child starts primary school, the differences in vocabulary, attention and confidence that later show up in PISA and in university entrance are already there. So the most important question in this week's category may be the least discussed in Spanish elections: which children get a good place in early years education before they turn three.

Spain has built a lot

The headline numbers are good. According to the OECD's Education at a Glance 2024, as summarised by the Spanish government, 41.8% of children under three were enrolled in 2022, up 9.9 points in a decade. Among two-year-olds the figure was 64.2%, against 41.8% across the OECD and 38.6% in the EU, and among children under two it was 29.7%, more than double the EU average. By age four, 97% of Spanish children are in school.

Recovery money helped. The Eurydice network's record of Spanish reforms shows €670.1 million handed to the regions since 2021 for new places in the first cycle, from component 21 of the EU recovery plan, with priority for children aged one and two and some 65,000 public places created or planned; later rounds redistributed money to the regions that met their targets. In 2026 the ministry also put forward a draft decree with smaller groups, four children per adult under one, six between one and two, eight between two and three, phased in from 2027–28.

The children who would gain most get in least

The trouble is who uses the places. The best breakdown by income is old, and it is striking. In data for 2016 cited by Save the Children in 2019, 62.5% of children under three in the richest fifth of households attended an early years centre, against 26.3% in the poorest fifth. Educo's 2023 study of the first cycle, also built on INE's Living Conditions Survey, found that among families whose childcare needs went unmet, 52.4% said the main reason was that they could not afford it and 36.9% that there were no places. Educo adds that cost is only one barrier: families where the mother does not work or has little education, and families in sparsely populated areas, get the least access. Spanish families also carried around 40% of spending on early years education, against about 25% across Europe, according to Save the Children.

Spain's own administrative data is far better today than in 2016, which makes the absence of an up-to-date breakdown by income itself a problem. A policy aimed at mobility should know, every year, which children it reaches.

And reaching the right children matters, because that is where the evidence of lasting effects is strongest. The work of James Heckman on high-quality programmes for disadvantaged children, such as ABC/Care in the United States, estimates a 13% return on investment for birth-to-five programmes, with gains in education, employment and health decades later. The OECD's PISA country notes show the same pattern at 15: pupils who attended pre-school for a year or more score higher, even after accounting for their background. In Estonia, the European benchmark, 96% of pupils had.

The proposal

The left is right that the first cycle should be a public right, free for families on low incomes, because the gaps in children's chances open before school starts, and Amartya Sen's capability approach asks exactly that: what a child is able to do and become. Halstead and Lind's case for education and assets starts at birth for the same reason. The market-liberal tradition is right that money should follow the child, so that families can choose any accredited centre, municipal, cooperative or private, and centres earn their funding by being good, with results measured and published.

What fits neither camp is to put need first and make the State do the paperwork. Spain already knows which children are poorest: they are in households receiving the minimum living income (IMV) or its child supplement. Our week 1 piece on the IMV showed how many people never claim what they are owed when they have to ask. So turn it round:

• Every child under three in a household on the IMV or the child supplement gets a free place offered automatically, by letter and phone, at the nearest accredited centres, with a named person to help the family choose. The offer stands until the child turns three.
• The place is funded per child, at the same rate whether the centre is public or private, on condition that it meets the ratios in the new decree, admits by the common rules and publishes its results.
• Those children go first in every admission process, ahead of other criteria, in every region. Rajan's third pillar applies here: the centre becomes the place where parents in a neighbourhood meet, so the town hall should run it as a community hub with health visitors and family support on site.
• Wherever places run short, a public lottery among eligible families allocates them, and the INE and AIReF follow both groups: language at three, school readiness at six, mothers' employment, results at twelve. Within a few years Spain would know what its first cycle does, for whom, and where to put the next euro.

The cost can be stated plainly. Save the Children put the price of making the first cycle universal at €1,640 million in 2019. A guarantee aimed at the poorest children costs a fraction of that, and the recovery-funded places are already built. What is missing is a rule that gives those places to the children who need them most first.