Editorial

EU official documents don’t usually make for easy or compelling reading and for that reason don’t always receive the attention they deserve. But for those with an interest in early childhood services it’s worth paying attention to the growing number of policy documents and Council decisions which we are now seeing in the area of education and training. Why? Because over the last four years we are beginning to see increasing mention of early years services to an extent which has not been seen since the early 1990s when we saw the 1992 Council Recommendation on Childcare (92/241/EEC) and a large number of reports published by the EC Childcare Network, including the still much discussed Quality targets in services for young children (European Commission Childcare Network 1996). We are seen by some as having lost a decade in the development of an effective EU framework for supporting early childhood services across the EU. But the direction of travel is encouraging and is almost certain to be reinforced by the signing in 2009 of the new EU Treaty.

You could be forgiven if you missed the publication in 2006 of the European framework of key competences (European Commission 2006b), which has been developed by the European Commission to help member states ensure that their citizens develop the competences that they require to lead successful and fulfilling lives. Why might you be interested? Because it emphasises not only the traditional subjects such as mother tongue, literacy, numeracy and science, but other ‘skills’ such as learning to learn, social and civic competence, initiative taking, entrepreneurship, cultural awareness and self expression, attributes not infrequently discussed in the columns of the EECERA journal because of their relevance in different ways to those working with young children.

So it is perhaps not surprising that the strategic framework on cooperation in education and training adopted by the Council of Ministers in May 2009 departed from the Education and Training 2010 programme by adding a benchmark in respect of early years: that by 2020 at least 95% of children between four‐years‐old and the age for starting compulsory primary education should participate in early childhood education (Council Conclusions of 12 May 2009 on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020) 2009/c 119/02).

Only four‐year‐olds, and why only the reference to just early childhood education, do I hear you ask? But the direction of travel was reinforced more powerfully by the symposium, Early Matters, organised by the Education and Culture Directorate General in October 2008, which concluded:

… quality ECEC is at the heart of the Lisbon Strategy: improving pre‐primary provision and widening access to it are potentially the most important contributions that school systems can make to improving opportunities for all and for achieving the Lisbon goals of sustainable economic growth and social cohesion. (European Commission 2006a, 3)

The symposium found that the benefits of high quality ECEC services are ‘wide‐ranging and multilevel, economic and social, for individuals and societies’ and that quality early childhood interventions ‘can bring the highest rates of return over the whole lifelong learning process’.

Odile Quintin, the Director General of DG Education and Culture – and who interestingly held the responsibility in an earlier post for the European Commission’s Childcare Network – noted in her forward to the excellent report commissioned from NESSE for the symposium:

A key message emerging from this report is that quality ECEC services can enhance children’s subsequent school performance. A second lesson is that ECEC services, however good, are important but not sufficient on their own to redress the effects of child poverty and disadvantage and to change life chances; investments should be made in a spectrum of policies that affect young children’s lives. A third message from the research reviewed here is that ECEC policy development and implementation is a complex issue and crosses traditional administrative barriers. It requires an integrated approach with cooperation and coordination across sectors and policy fields. (European Commission 2006a, 3)

Well yes, perhaps not news to any of us. And it might not be the way some of us would put it. But its significance lies in the way early years is now moving up the EU agenda again in various ways. Perhaps the most important of these, with the signing of the new EU Treaty, is the reinforcement that this will give to the rights of children themselves. As Jana Hainsworth, Eurochild’s Secretary General points out in Issue 17 of Children in Europe, for the first time a fundamental legal text of the European Union recognises children’s rights. This makes Article 24 in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which already mentions children’s rights, legally binding (Hainsworth 2009). As Hainsworth says, although it does not in itself create new powers it does require the EU to address children as a specific target group across all areas where it is active.

So what might this mean? It certainly adds strength to the work that is going on at an EU level on developing more child‐centred indicators for well‐being. Speaking at the 2009 Eurochild annual conference, senior officials from the Spanish and Belgian forthcoming presidencies said they would cooperate in developing an EU recommendation on child well‐being in 2010 (www.eurochild.org).

But more significantly it is likely to help in developing a more coherent approach to early childhood policy at an EU level. The narrow quantitative focus of the ‘Barcelona’ targets for childcare services, agreed by member states in 2002, has already been acknowledged to be problematic. And indeed only five countries so far meet the target of places for 33% of children aged nought–three; eight countries meet the target of places for 90% of children from the age of three to mandatory school age (EC memo 08/592 October 2008). But a stronger emphasis on children’s rights and child wellbeing should mean a shift at an EU level to seeing services not in terms of parental access to employment or later educational achievement but as a contribution to securing for every young child the right to the experiences and opportunities which make up a positive early childhood.

For EECERA journal readers there are two areas in particular which it might be worth looking out for. Firstly, will a more integrated approach help those member states still struggling to address the issue brought up in virtually every international review of a systematic and integrated approach to policy? As Donald Simpson reminds us in his paper in this issue on early years professionals in England, the conceptual split between ‘education’ and ‘care’ in policy, reflected in a divided workforce, is a continuing problem. Meanwhile, de Roos, van der Heijden and Gorter note problems arising in Dutch professional development schools from varying levels of qualifications of playgroup and kindergarten teachers.

The conclusions of the European symposium, Early Matters, noted rather dryly that ‘coordinated policy development is a challenge’. Jorma Virtanen’s article on examining the debate that took place in Finland in the 1920s over whether Finland’s pre‐school services should form their own stage of provision or become part of primary education reminds us that some of these debates go back a long way. The arguments he reports on from the columns of the educational journal Alkuopetus formed the backdrop to the decision to allow Finnish pre‐school services to continue to develop on the social pedagogical basis they retain today – a decision which owed much to the powerful advocacy of Elisabeth Alander who had studied at the Pestalozzi–Frobel‐Hauss of Berlin. These debates seem as fresh and relevant today as they were in the early nineteenth century.

Virtanen reminds us of the value of revisiting the historical as well as the wider social and political contexts for services. And every issue of the EECERA journal bears witness to the rich resource Europe offers, not only in terms of both separate as well as shared history in the development of services, but in the variety of linguistic and cultural traditions at local and regional as well as national levels which have shaped our early childhood services. In this issue this is exemplified in Plotnik and Wahle’s description of the changes in the kibbutzim in Israel from a collectivist to an individualistic society with its dramatic implications for parenting roles, in the analysis by Fekonja‐Peklaj, Marjanovič‐Umek and Kranjc of storytelling in homes and services in Slovenia, and Askeland and Maager⊘’s examination of the potential offered for ‘subject oriented language’ within the context of an approach of learning through play and extensive use of the natural environment which characterises many Norwegian kindergartens. Alex Morgan’s study of how interactive white boards (IWB) are currently being used in classrooms with young children as part of a new foundation phase pedagogy in England and Oliver Thiel’s exploration of early childhood teacher’s attitudes to mathematics remind us of the need to disseminate and share research.

So we should be looking for a more active interest at an EU level in enabling us to deepen our understanding of our rich heritage not only as an important tool which can help us to question and strengthen our own policies and practice, but because it is an important means by which we can protect it.

  Bronwen Cohen

   Chief Executive of Children in Scotland

   Member of the Editorial Board of Children in Europe