You're absolutely correct. We have great neurological research now that shows us that the hot area for brain development is in the first three years.
I want to make a bit of a radical case to you about the importance of upper years of education for that early development. When women are literate, they are able to stimulate their children in those early three years. They are able to access health services, to provide nutrition, and to earn income for their families in ways that support the zero-to-three-year age set. I would say that there's perhaps more value in the dollar spent on a girl's education than almost any other input into the early development of children, so that's GPE's focus.
We do work in the pre-primary, three-to-six-year age range. I want to remind everybody that every year of a child's life is important, and that many children in those years, three to six, fall off the staircase of the educational ladder. It's very important that we address their needs, particularly for children who come from very poor or marginalized contexts. They achieve much better results and learning outcomes in primary and secondary school if they're had that pre-primary learning.
That's really the focus of our work. Again, we don't dispute the importance of that zero-to-three age set and how significant the outcomes later in life are to the investments made at that period, but we would argue that the investment in literate young women is a significant input into that early development.