Transcript Slide 1

Towards quality ECEC services
in Europe for all
Key messages from UNICEF IRC work and
their implications for policy
Eva Jespersen
[email protected]
14 October 2008
Young Children have Rights
CRC Article 5: Parental guidance and child’s evolving capacities
Article 6 and 24: The right to life, survival and development; health and
health services
Article 18: … both parents have common responsibilities for the
upbringing and development of the child. … States Parties
shall render appropriate assistance to parents .. in the
performance of their child-rearing responsibilities and shall
ensure the development of institutions, facilities and services
for the care of children.
Article 27: Right to a standard of living adequate for the child's
physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development …
role of parents, support by the state
Articles 28 and 29: Right to and aim of education
Article 31: Right to leisure, play, participation in cultural and
artistic activities
CRC General Comment No. 7 is about early childhood – calling on
State Parties to understand issues of early childhood better
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Human Brain Development –
Synapse Formation
Conception
Language
Sensing
Pathways
(vision, hearing)
-6
-3
3
0
Months
6
9
Higher
Cognitive Function
1
4
8
12
Years
16
AGE
C. Nelson, in From Neurons to Neighborhoods, 2000.
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First year: one on one care crucial
 Neuroscience evidence: first year spent with a loving adult
for best physical, cognitive, mental development
 Exclusive breast feeding for 6 months
• No Europe wide data on exclusive breast-feeding is available
 Shonkoff: excessive levels of stress hormones in infancy
“disrupt brain architecture”
 Support to parenting; pre-natal and post natal
• Learning about risk of shaking baby syndrome, exposure to
domestic violence
• Inclusion of vulnerable families (in Norway, refugees informed
within a short period of arrival of importance of ECEC
programmes, and legislation on violence in the home)
 Case for partially compensated full year parental leave
including weeks for dads
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Effective Parental Leave
18 weeks
EC proposal New Directive:
18 weeks leave at 100% or
at least sick pay.
Source: Bennett (2008) Early Childhood
Services In OECD Countries, Innocenti
Working Paper 2008-01, UNICEF IRC,
Florence.
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The child care gap
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Access 0-3
 Growing number of infants and toddlers in care of ‘others’.
Still there are great variances
• A child in Denmark has about a 30 times greater change of
attending childcare than a child in Poland
• Belgium data shows low income and minorities more likely
not to use services
• In the UK and US a majority of children under the age of one
year are now in some form of childcare for a substantial
portion of each working day.
• In Finland, Norway and Sweden infant care is a rarity.
– In Sweden 20 years ago infant care was heavily subsidized and
widely used. But with the introduction of 12 months parental
leave at 80 per cent of salary, the use of nurseries declined
steeply and child care is today rare for Swedish children under
the age of 18
• The Barcelona targets on ‘childcare’, particularly the 33 per
cent attendance target for children under the age of three,
are unlikely to be met for many of the EU member states
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Access 3-6
 16 out of the 24 OECD countries for which data is available
have more than three quarters of four-year olds in ECEC
• Ranging from a few hours per day or week to full day centre
based services
• By informal/relative/au pari/neighbour to full scale centre
based services
 In the EU 84% of the children aged 3 to mandatory
schooling age are cared for under formal arrangements.
Some 44% of the children in this age group use such
arrangements for less than 30 hours (EU-SILC)
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Key features of ECS QUALITY
 Regulatory framework, curriculum, staff training and
support (for public and private services)
 Unified system of childcare and early education
 Universal better than special
• Inclusion of vulnerable kids, diversity for all kids
 Holistic development rather than poor care and early
‘schoolarisation’
 Stimulating environments –indoors and outdoors
 Highly qualified staff - > 80% staff trained in ECD, >50%
advanced degree
 Good staff:child ratio - 1:15, 24 kids per group
 Special attention to kids with learning needs
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Quality and Expenditure
 ‘Access without quality is of little merit’
• Good quality services takes well-trained and well-paid staff
and small groups
• Poor quality services may have adverse impact, contribute to
growing disparities
• The quality of quality services varies greatly across OECD
countries in terms of
– training and payment of staff
– staff-child ratios and group size groups
 Investment pays!
• ‘Investment in early childhood is more important than
subsequent investments’. Still, present investment is far too
low – needs doubling in many cases to meet the benchmark
set at ‘1 per cent of GDP’
• Countries that do invest, in general do well in providing
access to a wide array of quality ECEC services!
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Heckman Curve: Rates of Return to
Human Capital Investment
Source: James Heckman, former Nobel prize-winner in economics (Carneiro & Heckman, 2003)
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Findings: Children living in poverty
At-risk-of-poverty
rates in the EU
(%),EU-27, 2006
(IRC uses 50%)
% of total population concerned
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
EU25DK FI CY DE SI FR NL BE AT SE BG* CZ SK MT EE LU PT IE EL ES UK IT LT RO* HU LV PL
Children (0-17)
Total
Figure from paper by Isabelle Maquet; Fighting child poverty in the European Union: How international
benchmarking can contribute to awareness raising and enhance delivery at EU and national level.
Data source: European Union Statistics on Income Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2006
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Child poverty and exclusion
Disadvantages are persistent

Even the best funded and designed services can only overcome
disadvantage to a certain degree

Supporting policies are required to make investment in ECD/ECEC
pay off: poverty reduction, reaching every child from birth onward

RC 6 recommendation: all OECD countries should aim for a child
poverty rate target “below 10%” (50% of median)
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Promoting quality early childhood
policies in the EU
 National plan of action, special attention to the
disadvantaged
• Incentives to local government to implement
 ‘Access without quality is of little merit’
 Investment should be made on the whole spectrum of
policy areas that affect young children’s lives
 Collection and reporting of disaggregated statistical data
and other information
 Expansion of ‘Barcelona targets’ to include quality
aspects/standards - benchmark
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A best practice… San Miniato, Italy
40% of children <3 attend a nursery, 100% of 3-to-5 year
olds receive early education in state-run nursery schools

The level of local public expenditure is enough to cover about
three quarters of the total cost of services
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Legislation that ensures better qualified staff

Services provided work with parents, carers, families and
community

A “constructivist” concept of learning in which a child uses
experience in order to consturct his/her own views


Documentation of activities of each individual child
Young children are recognized as competent actors in the learning
process
An environment and design that is conducive for learning
Source: Children in Scotland (2008)Young Children in Charge: A Small Italian Community with Big
Ideas for Children, Edinburgh, www.childreninscotland.org.uk
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Thank you