Proposal for a Council Recommendation on a Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care
Date: 2018-03-19
Institutions: Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, European Commission
Subjects: education policy



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ROADMAP  






Roadmaps aim to inform citizens and stakeholders about the Commission's work to allow them to provide feedback and to participate effectively in future consultation activities. Citizens and stakeholders are in particular invited to provide views on the Commission's understanding of the problem and possible solutions and to share any relevant information that they may have.






Title of the initiative




Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care






Lead DG – responsible unit 




Directorate general for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture – B2 Schools and multilingualism






Likely Type of initiative




Recommendation






Indicative Planning




Q2 2018






Additional Information









This Roadmap is provided for information purposes only. It does not prejudge the final decision of the Commission on whether this initiative will be pursued or on its final content. All elements of the initiative described by the Roadmap, including its timing, are subject to change.









A. Context, Problem definition and Subsidiarity Check






Context






There is a strong call for European level action
1
 on early childhood education and care. The latest Communication on Strengthening European Identity
2
, the Council Conclusion on school development and excellent teaching
3
, and the Work- Life Balance Communication 
4
acknowledged the need to provide good quality early childhood services across Europe. Children's right to affordable provision of good quality services was also claimed by the European Pillar of Social Rights
5
. Investing in high quality early childhood education is a smart and efficient investment as it provides the foundation for successful lifelong learning. It is also an effective social investment addressing inequality and the challenges faced by disadvantaged children
6
, while having positive impacts on labour market participation of parents. The European budget
7
 has complemented national investment in early years services provision expansion. As research shows, this spending can only lead to positive impact for children, families and the European Union as a whole if services are of high quality.







Problem the initiative aims to tackle 






Currently there are more than 32 million children below the age of compulsory education in the EU, but only about 15 million of them have access to early childhood services provision
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. Countries have been striving to expand the availability of places and participation rates in early years services are increasing in the EU
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, but the right to a place is not yet a reality in most countries.The current Education and Training 2020 strategy's EU benchmark on participation of children from 4 to start of primary schools has been virtually met. However, children from migration or minority background and with less educated, disadvantaged parents attend early years services less frequently than native children or those with higher educated parents.
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A major problem of the early childhood sector is that quality of provision is often insufficient. Learning process and environments along with interactions between staff and children largely determines the quality of service provision. Curriculum frameworks or guidelines are in place, but in many education systems the educational component tends to be limited for younger children. Deficits in quality can also be linked to low qualification and competence of staff and limited opportunities for professional development. Furthermore quality of provision varies greatly within and between countries, between private and public settings, between urban and rural or remote areas, as well as between age groups (0-3 and 3-6).



Consequences stemming from lack of places and quality of services are serious and far reaching. Early years are the most formative for developing competences and learning capacities and influence greatly later educational and employability prospects. Research confirms that participation in high quality early childhood services leads to higher basic skills attainment and is a strong prevention measure to early school leaving. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that students who attended pre-primary school for more than one year scored higher in maths at age 15. Students who had not attended pre-primary education have 3 times greater chances of being low performers than those who attended it more than 1 year.
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 Without high quality early years services a competences gap starts to develop
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 very early between advantaged and disadvantaged children, reinforcing the cycle of intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. Early childhood seems to be a critical stage of intervention also for children with migrant background. Among children of comparable background, those who attended preschool in their current host country score better in reading
                           13
.



From a labour market perspective, the problem is acute as the situation does not allow parents to return to the labour market and thus it lowers both family income and economic growth. Most important barriers for parents to use early years services include affordability, accessibility of services and their perceived low quality.







Basis for EU intervention (legal basis and subsidiarity check) 






The Commission takes this action to encourage, support and complement Member States' activities in the field of early childhood education and care education policies, while respecting their overall responsibility for their educational systems. Under the principle of proportionality, the content and form of Union action shall not exceed what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Treaties. 


This initiative respects the proportionality principle and implements the Treaties which state that “The Union shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States” (Art. 165(1), Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). The proportionality of a voluntary, as opposed to regulatory, approach is considered accordingly.


The initiative will also contribute to the Treaty-based objectives
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 of equality between men and women with regard to labour market opportunities, and promoting a high level of employment in the European Union.







B. What does the initiative aim to achieve and how






As announced in the Communication on Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture this Council recommendation will support national reforms to reinforce education systems and to promote social inclusion. High quality early childhood services provision is an essential element of a modern and efficient public infrastructure.The recommendation will promote a common understanding of what constitutes good quality service provision and invite Member States to take that into account when taking decisions at the appropriate level. This common point of reference will be an important building block both for the Social Pillar and the European Education Area.



The Recommendation will capitalise on vast knowledge, research evidence and best practice developed through European cooperation. As one main element the Recommendation will use the 2014 report on Proposal for key principles of a Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care
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. This proposal reflects a consensus of experts of what quality provision means in the early childhood sector. It defines five crucial areas for consideration; access, workforce, curriculum, evaluation and monitoring, governance and funding. It contains ten broad action statements in these five areas that are indispensable and interconnected and lead to improvement of quality. 



In the Council Recommendation these ten statements will be complemented with good policy practices on inclusiveness, early competence development and language learning based on latest evidence from policy, research and practice. They are crucial for providing high quality provision for all children and especially disadvantaged children. In addition, self-assessment tools, including an optional set of indicators will be proposed to further support Member States reforms.



According to a recent review only few Member States have a Quality Framework or equivalent policy document, in place to govern early years services provision. This Recommendation can serve as basis for countries to develop their own quality frameworks, based on the experiences in other Member States as well as most recent research and adjusted to their specific contexts. It aims to increase substantially the overall quality of early childhood education systems and the availability of high quality provision also for disadvantaged groups.


The Recommendation will revisit the Education & Training 2020 target on participation in such services
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 and will call for offering places for at least 95% of children between 3 years of age and the mandatory school age. 







C. Better regulation






Consultation of citizens and stakeholders 






Following a series of previous consultations, Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture organised a targeted stakeholder consultation meeting on 31 January 2018. It was built on the consultations that have been held on the Proposal for key principles of a Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care
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, confirmed its overall approach and provided further insight in current challenges in the sector. In December 2016 Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture discussed already main challenges of the sector with stakeholders also in a conference on early years gathering 250 participants. Conclusions from the conference
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 will also be duly considered for the preparation of the Recommendation. In addition, over the course of the last two years, Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture worked with key experts across the European Union on the development of indicators and self-assessment tools.



Finally, the public consultations on the Work-Life Balance
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 and the European Pillar of Social Rights
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 have gathered relevant stakeholder positions in the area of early childhood education and care policies recently and will be taken into account.







Evidence base and data collection 






This initiative takes the form of a recommendation. Its implementation will depend on the Member States and will be based on processes of coordination and mutual learning. Against that background, an impact assessment is not considered to be required as it is difficult ex ante to identify clearly the expected impacts.



The Recommendation will be informed by a wide-range of research and policy practice, including Eurydice (2016) Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care; Education and training Monitor (2017); OECD (2017) Starting Strong V: Key indicators on Early Childhood Education and Care; CARE (2016) Policy Recommendations on quality; European Expert Network on Economics of Education, EENEE (2017) Benefits of early childhood education and care and the conditions under which they can be obtained; Network of Experts working on the Social dimension of Education and Training, NESET II (2017) The current state of national ECEC quality frameworks, or equivalent strategic policy documents governing ECEC quality in Member States. 











(1)
 The 
Joint Report of 2015
 defines priorities for Education and Training cooperation. It initiated the process of taking the Quality framework for early childhood education and care further.



(2)


  COM(2017) 673 final; Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture




(3)
 OJ 2017/C421/03



(4)
 COM(2017) 252 final



(5)

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/deeper-and-fairer-economic-and-monetary-union/european-pillar-social-rights/european-pillar-social-rights-20-principles_en
 



(6)
 
Commission Recommendation (2013) Investing in children: breaking the cycle of disadvantage



(7)
 ERDF supports investments in infrastructure of EUR 1.3 billion in the 2014-2020 programming period



(8)
 European Political Strategy Center (2017) 
10 Trends Transforming the Education as We Know It.
 



(9)
 European Commission (2017) Education and Training Monitor



(10)
 OECD/European Union (2015). Indicators of Immigrant Integration 2015: Settling In.: the attendance rate of 3-6 year-old immigrant children in early childhood education and care programmes was 7 p.p. lower than among their native-born peers in 2012



(11)
 OECD (2016) Low-performing students: why they fall behind and how to help them succeed



(12)
 Latest research can show this as early as 18 months



(13)


 OECD/European Union (2015). 
Indicators of Immigrant Integration 2015
: Settling In.




(14)
 Article 153 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). More precisely: Article 153(1)(i) TFEU with a view to achieving the objectives of Article 151 by supporting and complementing the activities of the Member States 



(15)
 Thematic Working group on Early Childhood Education and Care, Final report (2014)Proposal for key principles of a Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care, report of the Working Group on Early Childhood Education and Care under the auspices of the European Commission



(16)
 ET2020 Benchmark: 95% of children from 4 years to start of primary education should participate in early childhood education



(17)
 For example: European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities (2016) Statement on Early Childhood Intervention, European Parent Association (2015) The Best Interest of the Young Child: Position Paper on Early Childhood Education and Care Needs and Provisions from the Parents’ Perspective



(18)
 https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/great-start-life-report_en.pdf



(19)
 
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1311&langId=en&moreDocuments=yes



(20)
 
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?langId=en&catId=699&consultId=22&visib=0&furtherConsult=yes