The UAE has the highest preprimary enrollment rate in the GCC at approximately 82 per cent, but a new report from consulting firm Arthur D. Little argues that the region as a whole faces a substantial infrastructure deficit in early childhood education that demands treatment as an economic priority rather than a social expenditure.
Published in ADL’s latest Viewpoint, the analysis estimates that reaching near-universal kindergarten enrollment across the GCC by 2035 would require approximately 11,600 new kindergartens and 116,000 additional educators.
Critically, the firm finds that around 94 per cent of that build requirement reflects needs that already exist today rather than future demographic growth. The GCC currently has roughly 2.6 million children aged three to five.
Saudi Arabia is the dominant driver of that gap, accounting for around three-quarters of the kindergarten expansion needed under ADL’s modeling. Qatar and Kuwait have comparatively favorable educator-to-child ratios but room to broaden access.
For the UAE, ADL suggests the next phase of expansion lies not in kindergarten but further upstream, in the nursery years. If the ambition extends to meaningful formal provision at the nursery level, based on a 40 per cent enrollment scenario, the regional requirement grows to approximately 40,000 early childhood institutions and 224,000 educators across the GCC.
The economic case ADL makes goes beyond education outcomes. The firm describes high-quality early childhood programs as offering a “double return”: building human capital in the next generation while enabling more parents, particularly women, to participate in the workforce today.
“Early childhood education should no longer be viewed simply as a social cost,” said Yigit Saf, Partner at Arthur D. Little. “For GCC economies, it has the characteristics of economic infrastructure and offers a rare double return. Investment today strengthens the capabilities of the generation that will drive the region’s future diversification, while accessible, high-quality childcare can enable more parents to enter and remain in the workforce.”
The point lands with some force in Saudi Arabia, where female labor-force participation rose from 17 per cent in 2016 to 36 per cent in 2025, exceeding the Vision 2030 target of 30 per cent.
Research cited in the Viewpoint puts the economic return on high-quality early childhood programs from birth to age five at approximately 13 per cent per child per year, equivalent to roughly $6 in benefits for every $1 invested. That compares with estimated returns of 7 per cent–10 per cent for preschool provision alone.
Despite this, early childhood education remains structurally underfunded: around 175 million children globally are not enrolled in preprimary education, and only 6.6 per cent of education budgets on average are directed to the subsector. UNICEF recommends a minimum allocation of 10 per cent.
ADL identifies three constraints that need to be addressed alongside raw capacity expansion: workforce shortages, quality and regulatory standards, and parental engagement. The firm also calls for greater coordination across education, healthcare and labor policy, and flags carefully governed use of AI-enabled learning tools as part of a more integrated approach.
“The opportunity now is to translate strong participation into deeper, high-quality provision across the full early childhood journey. By continuing to invest in the earliest years, the UAE can reinforce its regional leadership while strengthening the human-capital foundations that will support its economy for decades to come,” Kazmi concluded.
