A New Standard for Childcare: Structuring Safe, Stimulating Early Learning Globally

The World Bank’s guidance outlines a flexible, equity-driven framework for delivering safe, stimulating, and developmentally rich childcare across diverse global contexts. It emphasizes the importance of trained caregivers, play-based learning, and strong national systems to ensure sustained quality and access.

In a landmark effort to redefine childcare, the World Bank’s Guidance Note on Essential Elements of Quality in Childcare Settings, developed in collaboration with renowned institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank, BRAC, the International Labour Organization (ILO), WHO, and UNICEF, presents a pragmatic and flexible framework to raise the standard of early childhood services worldwide. The note stresses that quality childcare is not a luxury but a necessity, especially for ensuring safe, stimulating environments that support children’s development and allow parents, particularly women, to engage in work and education. The quality of childcare directly influences uptake; when parents trust these services, they’re more likely to participate fully in the economy. Conversely, poor-quality settings can leave children vulnerable to psychological harm, toxic stress, and long-term developmental setbacks.

Defining Childcare Through a Flexible, Inclusive Lens

The guidance promotes an inclusive and adaptable definition of childcare. It encompasses not only center-based care like crèches and preschools, but also home-based and informal family arrangements. Recognizing that preschool centers can also serve childcare functions if they operate full-day and meet working parents' needs, the document positions childcare as a core component of early childhood development and human capital formation. This inclusive understanding acknowledges the diversity of global contexts and resource constraints, while emphasizing that quality principles can be upheld in all settings, urban or rural, formal or informal.

Childcare is described not merely as custodial care, but as a vital intervention that contributes to a child’s early development. Drawing from the WHO’s Nurturing Care Framework, the guidance emphasizes the five foundational components children need: good health, adequate nutrition, safety and security, responsive caregiving, and early learning opportunities. When delivered effectively, childcare has the power to promote school readiness, reduce dropouts, and improve long-term educational and labor market outcomes.

Structural and Process Quality: Two Halves of a Whole

The heart of the guidance lies in its detailed explanation of what constitutes childcare quality. It divides this into structural and process elements. Structural quality includes safe buildings, proper ventilation, appropriate adult-to-child ratios (e.g., 1:3 for infants, up to 1:15 for older children), and essential facilities such as toilets, clean drinking water, and space for play and rest. Childcare workers should be fairly compensated, provided with training and supervision, and supported in creating stimulating learning environments.

Equally vital is process quality, which encompasses the day-to-day experiences of children, how they interact with caregivers, what kind of learning materials they use, and how their development is supported. Activities must be play-based, culturally relevant, and conducted in the language the child understands. Caregiver-child interactions must be warm, attentive, and responsive, not based on rote learning or discipline. Parents, too, play a role: strong communication between parents and practitioners is key to continuity in care and development.

A unique emphasis is placed on learning through play. The document explains that play is a child’s most natural form of exploration and learning. Whether using blocks, singing, drawing, or pretending, children build cognitive and emotional skills in ways that textbooks can’t replicate. Importantly, play doesn’t require expensive toys, local, recycled, and natural materials like shells, bottle caps, and cloth can be highly effective when paired with thoughtful facilitation.

Workforce: The Bedrock of Childcare Quality

A recurring theme throughout the guidance is the urgent need to professionalize the childcare workforce. Practitioners, often underpaid and undervalued, are essential for ensuring both safety and development. The document draws on the ILO’s 5Rs Framework, especially “Reward” and “Represent”, to advocate for better working conditions, fair wages, and rights to unionize and collective bargaining.

Training is emphasized not as a one-time event but as an ongoing process. A baseline of 2–8 weeks of pre-service training is recommended, covering child development, play-based pedagogy, safety, and parent engagement. This should be followed by continuous in-service support through mentoring, peer networks, and refresher sessions. Case studies from Bangladesh, Kenya, and Uzbekistan show how short, targeted training can dramatically improve outcomes even in low-resource environments.

The guidance also notes that many countries lack sufficient numbers of trained practitioners. Governments are encouraged to develop national frameworks to define qualifications, establish career pathways, and integrate childcare training into technical and vocational systems.

Building Systems that Sustain and Scale Quality

Beyond individual programs, the guidance calls for robust national systems to monitor and improve childcare quality. These systems should include realistic quality standards, simple and affordable registration processes, regular monitoring through observations and feedback loops, and transparent data systems that inform planning and support families. Governments must not only set regulations but also support providers, especially small or informal ones, to meet them through financial aid, technical assistance, and community engagement.

Examples from countries like South Africa, India, and Jamaica illustrate how progressive standards (e.g., bronze, silver, gold levels) can help onboard and improve childcare providers incrementally. South Africa’s Vangasali campaign, for instance, demystifies the registration process and offers step-by-step support to informal providers, aiming to improve access and safety simultaneously.

The guidance concludes by emphasizing the importance of getting quality right before expanding access. Investments in childcare must be accompanied by equal investment in quality assurance to avoid inefficiencies and negative developmental impacts. Bhutan’s approach, prioritizing curriculum, training, and monitoring tools before scaling, serves as a model for countries seeking to expand services responsibly.

In sum, this guidance note lays a clear path forward: one that centers the rights and needs of children, recognizes the contributions of caregivers, and builds the systemic foundations needed to deliver quality at scale. It invites governments, development partners, and communities to reimagine childcare as a critical social infrastructure that supports not only today’s families but the future of societies at large.