The financial framework assesses the scope of financing that will be required and identifies from where and how those funds will come. This may include national and regional government budgets, new sources of public revenue, private and nongovernmental sources, debt relief, and international funding agents. The framework should discuss how these sources of financing are predictable, sustainable, and affordable.
Finances may be considered the greatest obstacle to the enactment of national ECCE systems but it is often the fragmentation of authority across disparate actors and programmatic fragmentation that poses even larger challenges. If these are overcome, cost savings will result and revenue sources can be redirected. Thus, the system of financing must recognize societal direct and indirect cost savings and budgetary economies that will occur as a result of a sustained and resilient ECCE system. These resources can be computed as a percentage of a country’s GDP to gain a sense of a country’s operational fiscal commitment to ECCE and to benchmark that commitment with comparable countries. International benchmarks developed by ECCE experts suggest at least one percent of GDP be expended for pre-primary education and 0.5 percent for child and maternal health and care, as the minimum required to ensure sustainability, equity, and quality services1. These may or may not be relevant to the needs and situations faced by particular member states but the overall level of commitment of societal resources is a question worth considering.
In creating the financial framework, a number of financial analyses will need to be conducted. First, the overall, current expenditure by source of funds on ECCE must be examined. This will require examining expenditures in national budgets, in regional or municipal governments, and for nonprofit and private sector entities. Second, the cost of the proposed ECCE program of services will need to be estimated. Third, financial analyses will need to be conducted that will examine possible areas of cost off-sets as a result of savings, increases in revenues in the future as a result of ECCE enactment, and new sources of possible revenue/financing—such as through NGOs, international organizations, country aid, and possible debt relief. These analyses can be conducted in a number of ways germane to the budgetary practices of individual MSs, however, sound financial planning will be needed to undergird the sustainability of the ECCE system and to understand practical financial impediments.
The financial framework should also consider the allocation of resources on various components of the ECCE system. The analysis of current expenditures can serve as a baseline for the current allocation but it is likely it that reallocation across ECCE functions will be needed for system enactment.
The financial framework has the power to make real the ECCE system proposed under the program framework. Without sound financial planning and options, the program framework cannot be realized. The framework may lay out various options and scenarios given financial forecasts and projections for the consideration of policymakers. It should be kept in mind that the framework is a proposed allocation of societal’s resources that contains analyses to back up that proposal. To influence legislators in the actual allocation of government resources, the framework may also address how ECCE is to serve as an important strategy in the country’s overall economic and social development plans.