The second edition of the Eurydice report on early childhood education and care gives comparative insights into the European achievements in the field.
The second edition of the Eurydice report ‘Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe’ (2019) documents the progresses made within Europe, regarding the national early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies. The report has a large scope insofar as it covers public, private and voluntary sectors (i.e. publicly subsidised and self-financed) and centre-based and regulated home-based provisions. In the report, 38 Erasmus+ (E+) participating countries are covered. Therefore, the report comprises 28 EU Member States (MS), as well as ten additional non-EU countries, including Switzerland (who has the status of partner country in E+). The 2019 edition of the report builds on the first ECEC report, issued in 2014. Given that the latest version is both an update and an upgrade of the 2014 report, the 2019 report includes a new chapter on quality assurance and several new insights into the inter-connectedness of core indicators.
The Eurydice report adopts a child-centred approach and provides indicators on crucial ECEC transversal areas e.g. the key quality areas of governance, access, staff, educational guidelines as well as evaluation and monitoring. Particular attention was given to the interconnectedness of the policies under study, as well as to the importance of their inclusiveness, as a factor promoting equality from an early age. The first part of the report presents policymakers, researchers and parents with a cross-country comparison of the current ECEC policies across Europe. The second part of the report gives an in-depth look of the key features and structure of national ECEC systems.
The report outlines the breakthroughs made across Europe in key quality areas identified in the Council recommendation on High Quality ECEC Systems, adopted on the 22 May 2019 by the EU education ministers (see SwissCore article). The recommendation aims to support MS in their efforts towards improving both access and quality of their ECEC systems. It also endorses the EU Quality framework for ECEC, which consists of 5 key dimensions to improve ECEC systems (i.e. access, workforce, curriculum, monitoring and evaluation, and governance and funding).
In addition, the European Commission (EC) facilitates the cooperation on ECEC between the MS through the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020 framework). The ET 2020 framework supports the achievement of several European benchmarks, including the one of ‘95% of children above 4 years old attending early childhood education and care’. The ‘Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe’ report discloses that the benchmark has been achieved for the EU MS (95.4%), although the participation rate in early education still widely differs across countries, regions and areas.