Date: 24-07-2019

Insights from the Eurydice 2019: Key Data Report on Early Childhood Education and Care

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is increasingly acknowledged as providing the foundations for lifelong learning and development. The second edition of Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe that was published in July, 2019 charts the progress made in the key quality areas identified in the Council Recommendation on High Quality ECEC Systems.

The report provides indicators on the key quality areas of governance, access, staff, educational guidelines as well as evaluation and monitoring, in the 38 European countries (43 education systems) participating in the EU's Erasmus+ programme. Besides, it offers detailed supporting evidence and examples of policies from all over Europe and provides a solid foundation for future policy-making and research.

The first part provides policymakers, researchers and parents with comparative information on the current ECEC policies across Europe. The second part gives an overview of the key features of national ECEC systems accompanied by a diagram of their structure.

According to the report, the types of ECEC services and their quality differs according to children's age in most parts of Europe with children under three years old having limited access to high quality ECEC. In fact, several countries still struggle to guarantee access for every child and have low participation rates.

The report findings reveal that there is still some way to go before the policies that are necessary to ensure quality in the key dimensions are firmly embedded in all European ECEC systems. Universal access, high quality and integration of ECEC services have not been achieved yet in many European countries.

You can see the key findings of the report here.