Children from disadvantaged family backgrounds that are at risk of receiving less attention than others during their early childhood years can benefit particularly strongly from ECE enrolment. For this reason, ECE also improves the equality of opportunities and strengthens social mobility. A lack of funding is one of the reasons for low enrolment rates, although federal funding is available to support the current expenditures of operating childcare centres and building pre-schools has been one element of the infrastructure programme PAC2. In addition, the federal Prolnfancia programme provides financial support for the costs of building and equipping childcare centres. It has so far funded over 2000 centres and provided resources to equip several hundred more (Evans and Kosec, 2012). Federal support for ECE should be continued and expanded to reach the ambitious objective of the new National Education Plan (PNE) of achieving universal enrolment of 3 and 4-year-olds by 2016.