Education in States and Nations: 1991
(ESN) Indicator 9: Enrollment in preprimary education
This indicator measures the percentage of 3- to 6-year-olds
enrolled full-time
in public and private preprimary education by single year of age.
This
percentage reflects the importance placed on student
participation in
preprimary education and the availability of low-cost or public
education.
Variations in the percentage of children enrolled in preprimary
education at
different ages are affected by differences in the timing of entry
and
transition between preprimary and primary education. This
indicator can be
affected by inconsistencies in the definition of preprimary
education among
countries, however.
- In the G-7 countries for which data were available, 1991
preprimary
education enrollment for 3-year-olds ranged from 21 percent
in Japan
to 98 percent in France. In the United States, about one
third of 3-
year-olds were enrolled.
- By age 4, over half of the children in the United States
were enrolled
(57 percent). In five countries - France, Belgium, the
Netherlands,
New Zealand, and Spain - enrollment among 4-year-olds
exceeded 90
percent.
- Enrollment rates in preprimary education among children at
the younger
and older extremes of the 3- to 6-year-old population
differed
significantly between states and nations. Five of the 15
countries
for which data were available reported that more than half
of all 3-
year-olds were enrolled in preprimary education programs.
However,
none of the U.S. states showed an enrollment rate that
approached 50
percent among 3-year-olds. Less than one-fifth of the
6-year-olds in
the U.S. were enrolled in preprimary education programs,
while 10 of
the 16 nations for which data were available reported
enrollment rates
above 35 percent for 6-year-olds.
- In most of the nations and states included - with the
exception of
Belgium, Denmark, France, New Zealand, Norway, and Turkey -
the
highest enrollment rates were among 5-year-olds.
(Enrollment rates
were not available for 5-year-olds in Finland, Sweden, and
the United
Kingdom.)
Table 8b 
Figure 9
