The Starting Strong Network has received a mandate from the OECD Education Policy Committee to assist member countries to develop effective and efficient policies for early childhood care and education.

Means of fulfilling this mandate include:

- Developing, sharing and disseminating information on experience, research and good practice of country experiences in the field.

- Serving as a clearing house of new policy research in the field and identifying new areas for fruitful policy research and analysis.

- Identifying data development needs and contributing to the development of methodology for developing such data.

- Organising workshops on selected policy themes.

- Facilitating contacts among researchers, policy-makers and practitioners and among
other international networks in related fields.