As emphasised by the Committee on the Rights of the Child (General Comment No. 17, para. 9), ‘Play and recreation are essential to the health and well-being of children and promote the development of creativity, imagination, self-confidence, self-efficacy, as well as physical, social, cognitive and emotional strength and skills. They contribute to all aspects of learning.’ The Committee also recognises  play as one of the most distinctive features of early childhood (General Comment No. 7, para. 34).

States shall provide assistance to parents and legal guardians in performing their child-rearing responsibilities. In order to enable parents, especially working parents to combine family obligations with work responsibilities and participation in public life, States have to establish child care institutions, facilities and services for which they are eligible. This indicator examines availability of such services for all working parents including those in the unorganised (informal)  sector and those residing in rural and remote areas.

Since ECCE policies and programmes aim to attain holistic child development, covering aspects related to a child’s health, nutrition, development, education, hygiene and protection, ECCE governance should encompass multisectoral coordination and integrated services. This requires the involvement of different government ministries in decision making, planning and execution. This indicator assesses  whether the ECCE system is implemented through multisectoral coordination.

This indicator examines whether children from a particular marginalised community have equal access to education. Marginalised groups include women and girls, Indigenous peoples and minorities, persons with disabilities, persons with HIV / AIDS, child labourers, persons in detention, migrants, refugees and IDPs, and persons living in poverty.     

Research evidence from around the world echoes that learning first in one's mother language leads to better outcomes in the future – for individuals, cultures, and nations. This indicator assesses the percentage of children who are taught in their mother tongue at a given level of education.

This is the SDG. 4.2.1 indicator that tracks the progress made to SDG target 4.2. Which is 'by 2030, ensure all boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education’.

As per the SDG definition, this refers to the proportion of children aged 24 to 59 months who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psycho-social well-being, and it includes the following concepts :

The participation rate in pre-primary education refers to the percentage of children who participated in at least one year of pre-primary education before primary school enrolment.

Region of origin/residence is understood as the national region where students resided and completed their upper secondary education.