Although national contexts are different, countries face similar challenges in attempting to ensure that all children have access to high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision. There are inevitable tensions in trying to deliver on all three corners of what Katherine Magnuson and Jane Waldfogel refer to in their chapter on the US as the ‘childcare triangle’ – access, quality and affordability. In this concluding chapter we draw together the evidence from our eight country case studies to examine how different countries have best addressed these common challenges.

We begin by asking how disadvantaged children can be encouraged and enabled to access formal ECEC. Second, we ask what can be done to make sure that this provision is of the highest possible quality. We then explore how countries have addressed the trade-off between expanding access to include more children (or including them from an earlier age) and improving the quality of what is on offer. We go on to look at issues of delivery, including decentralised provision and the role of different sectors, including private for-profit providers. Finally, we come back to the bottom line: extending provision costs money, and so does improving quality. Do governments simply need to find more resources or are there ways to spend money more effectively?

Policies, of course, emerge and are implemented against a specific political and institutional context, and scholars of comparative social policy, pointing to the breadth of countries’ dissimilarities, warn against the dangers of simple ‘policy borrowing’ (Mahon, 2006). As the individual chapters illustrate, national approaches to ECEC are underpinned by different social and cultural norms regarding gender equality and childhood, by differences between policy makers as to whether parental employment or child development is the prime focus of concern, and by differences in the length of time that childcare and early education have had a place on the policy agenda (see also, among others, Kremer, 2007; Lewis et al, 2008; Saraceno, 2011). Our aim in this chapter is not to advocate for importing particular policies into any one country, but to identify common themes and highlight insights from good practice which might be useful in thinking about the way ECEC is organised, funded and delivered. We also try not to focus too heavily on contemporary policy debates in any one country: our aim is to draw out broader lessons that will stand the test of time.