Executive summary:
This report provides an overview of the current situation regarding early childhood education and care provision in Scotland, England, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia, France and the Netherlands. For each of these nations the review provides a country report (information on Scotland and England are presented in separate chapters) with detailed information on the national frameworks of ECEC, guiding principles and objectives, governance, types of services, types of providers, funding and costs, systems of quality assurance and access levels.
Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is defined in the report as all educational and care arrangements for children from birth to compulsory schooling, regardless of setting, funding, opening hours, or programme content. As this wide definition indicates, ECEC can take many forms. A key objective of this report is to provide insight into the different ways in which ECEC is organised in the countries that form part of this review.
ECEC is embedded within wider socio-economic and policy contexts and the success of any ECEC policy strategy will depend on the way it links in with families' economic and social needs and other policies. A second objective of this review is to provide information on wider issues related to ECEC provision: on socio-economic context and employment patterns in the countries, as well as on maternity and parental leave policy and uptake patterns. Each country report also includes a section on the wider welfare system and social support for families, giving an overview of benefits available to families in each of the selected countries.
Finally, as a third objective the report discusses the extent to which the countries covered in the study are meeting European Union (EU) targets and recommendations.