Odile Quintin, the European Commission's Director-General for Education and Culture, opened the symposium. She pointed out the importance of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) both for equity and efficiency reasons. She emphasized that a high quality ECEC has more effects than only facilitating mothers` participation in labour markets, it is also an investment in the cognitive and emotional development of the children. She mentioned the overwhelming evidence from US studies that shows considerable positive effects of ECEC interventions in terms of many dimensions. As in her opinion the trade-off between equity and efficiency is not so considerable in ECEC than in other fields, it is worthwhile to invest in the development of ECEC. This means, from a European perspective, that it is important to improve the statistical infrastructure in this field and member states should intensify the exchange of Best Practices concerning their ECEC services.
The keynote speech was held by Dr. Lawrence Schweinhart, the President of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. In his presentation on “Why do countries invest in early childhood education?” he presented the HighScope Perry Preschool Study, one of the most important programs on ECEC that has been launched in the United States during the 1960s. In this experiment, disadvantaged children were randomly assigned to a treatment and control group, whereas those in the treatment group received a broad range of ECEC services during a two-year period. He presented the overwhelming long term effects of this ECEC services on the children in the treatment group in terms of many economic and social outcomes (for example less crime and higher earnings). Moreover, he emphasized the cost effectiveness of these programs indicating that 1 Dollar invested in the ECECE services could yield up to 16 Dollars return due to higher tax revenues and/or lower fiscal expenditures. He encouraged policymakers and researchers to set up similar programs to the HighScope Perry Preschool Study to achieve positive results from ECEC services. From his point of view, the most promising approaches should particularly concentrate on targeting low-income and at-risk children, investing in qualified teachers and ensuring cooperation between teachers and parents.
In the first Session Prof. Torberg Falch from the University of Trondheim and the EENEE network talked about “The economic importance of early childhood education in a European perspective”. He outlined the differences between the US systems of ECEC and the European care arrangements, whereas the latter are mainly characterized by a universal design targeting all children from all kinds of families. Presenting evidence of ECEC services from different European countries he concluded that educational outcomes of ECEC services are smaller in magnitude than in the US experimental settings, positive effects are (like in the US evidence) mainly present for disadvantaged children. From his point of view, ECEC services mainly have to compensate for the lack of cognitive, social and emotional stimulation in some children’s home. So, improvements should concentrate on particularly targeting disadvantaged children to enhance their school readiness.
The second Speaker of the first Session, Prof. Helen Penn from the University of East London and the NESSE network dealt with the topic “The social importance of ECEC – Tackling inequalities and disadvantage through ECEC”. She revealed the multidimensional character of many social benefits that might be expected by ECEC services. In her opinion, only good quality ECEC services can achieve promising results, bad quality services, however, are harmful to the children. Moreover, she emphasized the better standard of publicly managed ECEC services compared to privatized for profit care. In terms of policy recommendations she called for a comprehensive and interlinked approach to ECEC services and an updating process of the EU Childcare network quality targets for ECEC services.
The second Session was opened by Deborah Roseveare, Head of the Education and Training Policy Division, OECD Directorate for Education. In her presentation on “Key conclusions from OECD work on ECEC and their implications for policy” she underpinned the importance of affordable, high quality childcare for working parents that contribute to future economic growth and create a good starting point for education and better social outcomes for all. She also identified the most important challenges ECEC services are confronted with: finding an adequate balance between quality and cost, ensuring delivery of ECEC services for the most disadvantaged, getting the balance between cognitive and non-cognitive skill development, find the best institutional settings and addressing capacity constraints.
The second speaker of this session was Dr. Eva Jespersen, Chief, Monitoring Social and Economic Policies, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. She talked on “Towards quality ECEC services in Europe for all – key messages from UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre work and their implications for policy”. She argued that in the presence of convincing neuroscientific evidence on the development of cognitive, emotional and physical skills in early childhood ECEC services are (although there is also public awareness) in many countries very low developed. Insufficient staff training, high staff turnover and a lack of special treatments for disadvantaged children can be observed. She cited expert opinion that public funding in excess of 1 percent of GDP is necessary to enhance an efficient ECEC system that reduces future costs of adverse behaviour of children who did not attend ECEC or only in a bad system.
Session 3 was held as an interactive Panel on “Implementing Quality ECEC Services- Lesson from Practice”. The participants form different European countries reported on their experiences and best practices in the field of ECEC. It was obvious that ECEC services can only be considered in the socio-cultural context of the different countries and/or regions where they are implemented. Quality measuring was identified as one crucial point in all countries; however, there was no complete agreement between the panel members on adequate and universal indicators. The discussion with the audience revealed the most important differences between the European member states concerning the ECEC systems. There is large variation in terms of starting age and time scopes (part-time or full-time care) in the ECEC systems. A further important discussion point was the question whether ECEC systems should be compulsory. On all topics conclusions and overall agreement could not be achieved which is partly due to the lack of data and clear empirical evidence on many of these points.
© 2004 European Expert Network on Economics of Education This e-mail address is protected against spambots. Please activate JavaScript in order to see them. | Home | Site Map | Contacts | Impressum | Printversion
