High quality Early Years for children under three-Part 1

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) recently published a new report entitled Building Quality Education and Care for Children under Three. The report uses data from TALIS Starting Strong 2024 to examine how to achieve more consistent high quality Early Years for children under age three. The report explores how differences across types of provision and providers shape children’s daily experiences, the resources available and staff working conditions. Data used in the report is based on the following systems: the Flemish Community of Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Israel, New Brunswick (Canada), New Zealand, Norway and Quebec (Canada).

TALIS Starting Strong 2024 findings

• Despite rising enrolment in Early Years for children under three, inequalities in participation persist.
• There are various types and degrees of fragmentation within the Early Years system for children under three.
• More vulnerable children tend to be concentrated in specific types of settings.
• There are differences in structural quality between for-profit versus not-for-profit settings, but less so in process quality.
• Children in home-based settings may experience different staff practices than those in centre-based settings.
• The degree of integration of the Early Years system shapes the experiences of children under three in settings.
• Early Years staff working with more vulnerable children experience more demanding working conditions, which can limit their ability to adapt their practices to children’s needs.

Key features of Early Years for children under three

• Expenditure per child has increased but varies widely across OECD countries.
• Private expenditure plays a bigger role in funding Early Years for children under three than in pre-primary and primary education.
• The fragmentation of the Early Years system can provide flexibility to families and help adapt to children’s needs, but it can also contribute to gaps in participation in Early Years.
• Capacity issues remain an issue in most Early Years settings, particularly for children under three. More than half of settings in Ireland, Norway and the two Canadian provinces report that children were placed on a waiting list and are still waiting for a place. This is also more prominent is urban areas.
• Placing children on a waiting list is less common in home-based and small settings.
• In all systems, children from socio-economically disadvantaged homes are concentrated in some Early Years settings.
• Some private or private for-profit Early Years settings are less likely to enrol large shares of children from socio-economically disadvantaged homes.
• Early Years settings enrol small percentages of children with special education needs, but these children tend to be concentrated in some settings.

Meaningful interactions and inclusive practices

The report highlighted the following practices across the included systems in relation to meaningful interactions and inclusive practices:

• Staff practices target children’s social and emotional development, but early literacy development activities are also used. Staff frequently sing songs, read books to children and ask questions when doing so.
• Staff place a greater value on developing social and emotional and physical skills in children than on other foundational skills. Executive functions which enable children to focus their attention, follow routines and adapt to new situations are less prioritised than other areas of development, although they underpin all types of learning.
• Staff practices with children reflect their professional beliefs about developmental priorities for children.
• Non-integrated settings are designed to group children under three together, while integrated settings often cater for mixed-age groups, with staff working with children ranging from infancy to six years and beyond.
• In systems with integrated settings, staff working primarily with children under three tend to make greater use of specific practices to meet children’s needs compared to staff working with more mixed age groups.

Conclusion

This Policy in Focus is part one of a two-part series outlining the findings of the report. Next week we will provide an overview of the findings in relation to the Early Years workforce across Early Years systems.

You can read the report in full here. You can read our previous Policy in Focus where we provide a full breakdown of the TALIS Starting Strong 2024 results here. If you have any questions or queries about our work, please contact policy@earlychildhoodireland.ie.