Foreign services - European childcare provision

Britain should look at the development of early years services in other European countries to assess what it wants for its own, argues Professor Peter Moss

As co-ordinator of the EC Childcare Network, and since it ended in 1996, I have had many requests for information about early childhood services in Europe, often from students tackling a college assignment. So here I will sketch some of the main features of these services.

But first, a warning: with brevity comes simplification. This should be seen as a very broad brush picture with little fine detail. I will focus on the structure of services, not the theories and practices that shape their work as part of a rich and complex scene.

By 'Europe' I really mean the 15 member states of the European Union, not the many other countries of western, central or eastern Europe, most of which have important traditions and experiences. A broader and deeper understanding may come from some of the recommended reading (see box), and colleges and nurseries should try to make European exchanges and placements part of their training and staff development.
Defining services.

What do I mean by 'early childhood services'? Broadly speaking, all services providing education and care for children below compulsory school age or before starting primary schooling, whichever comes first. In Britain, this means when children start reception class, sometime after their fourth birthday. But in the rest of Europe, early childhood usually goes up to six, the most common compulsory school age (in the Nordic countries, this used to be seven, but there has been a move for some form of schooling, voluntary or compulsory, to start at six). The only countries to keep company with Britain are Ireland and the Netherlands, where compulsory school age is six and five respectively, but most children enter school on a voluntary basis at four; and Luxembourg, where attendance at nursery schooling is compulsory from four.

At the other end of the age spectrum, some children, at least, may start going to early childhood services from about four to six months. But an effective system of paid parental leave can have a major influence on starting age. The most striking example is Sweden, where parents are entitled to 15 months paid leave, 12 months at 80 per cent of earnings, and most children enter services in their second year. So in Britain, early childhood services really span the age range six months to four years and a bit, while in Sweden, they span 12 months up to six years.

Publicly-funded
Within these varying borders, we can discern some broad outlines. First, most of Europe is well on the way to achieving three years of publicly-funded early childhood services for children from three to six years, whether in nursery school (for example the cole maternelle in France) or kindergarten (a pedagogical service, but usually located outside the education system). This has already been achieved in countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The Nordic EU countries (Denmark, Finland, Sweden) have gone even further, with legal entitlements or political commitments to provide for all children from at least 12 months whose parents want a place. Moreover, this provision is usually on offer on the basis of full-time hours (or at least full-time school hours).

Integrated or split
However, if we look to the organisation of services there is more variation. Most obviously, there is the extent to which countries have integrated or split systems.

The Nordic countries have long had completely integrated early childhood services, the responsibility of one government department, with a single system of law, funding, staffing and provision and a concern with both care and learning. Many services are 'age integrated', taking children from one to six. In the past, the system has been located in the social welfare system, which in the Nordic countries, unlike Britain, provides universal services. However, in the 1990s, the Swedish system was transferred into education, bringing together early years, schooling and out-of-school (what the Swedes call 'free time') provisions.

The reforms underway in Sweden are particularly important, involving not only restructuring, but rethinking childhood, learning, knowledge and work with children. Integrating early years and free time provision into education does not signal a school takeover, but is part of a process which calls for everyone to look again at what they do and how they think. As a country that has also merged responsibility for early years and free time provision with schooling, Britain should be watching Sweden carefully.

Other countries have services split between welfare and education. France is the classic case: provision for children under two-and-a-half years is the responsibility of welfare authorities, while provision for children from three to six falls to education. Between two-and-a-half and three there is an overlap, when children may be in day nurseries or nursery schools.

This age overlap varies - in Portugal, for example, children from three to six may be in services coming under either welfare or education. Services under welfare and education have different legal and regulatory frameworks, different funding (including different costs to parents), different orientations, different staffing and so on.

Between these two extremes come two countries which are attempting to move from a split to an integrated system: Spain and Britain. These 'partially integrated' countries have rejected the logic of separate care and education approaches, but have still not moved to the seamless approach of the Nordic countries. The old divisions remain visible.

Deep ambivalence
The division of countries into integrated, partially integrated and split systems also does not quite do justice to Austria and Germany. Although services for young children under and over age three are the responsibility of welfare authorities (with a few regional exceptions), and have some types of staff in common, things are far from fully integrated, and provision for children under and over three is still seen as two different things. In both countries, children under and over three are generally in different services. There are high levels of publicly-funded provision for children over three, but low levels for under-threes (except in the former East Germany). This seems to reflect a deep ambivalence about non-parental care and public responsibility for children under three, and a widespread view that these children should really be at home cared for by their mothers.

Staff training
Nothing is so revealing of how integrated or split a national system is than the way staffing is organised. Compare the Nordic countries with, say, France. In the former case, there is one main type of worker across all ages and services, a pedagogue. The pedagogue is well trained - at least three years at a post-18 higher education level, and relatively well paid, near the level of schoolteachers. There may also be untrained or less skilled staff, but pedagogues make up the majority of the workforce and are not  confined to one group of services or one age group of children.

In France, by contrast, the workforce is completely split. Welfare system nurseries are normally headed by health-trained nurses, other staff consisting of 'auxiliares' with a one-year post-16 training and 'educatrices' with a post-18 training lasting 28 months.

The core worker in nursery schools, however, is a teacher with a five-year post-18 university training. Split systems, therefore, are usually marked by highly differentiated staffing - high-level teachers and low-level nursery workers.

Spain, as it moves to an integrated system, has begun to grapple with this situation. The new core worker is an early years teacher, with a three-year university training at the same level as primary teachers. She specialises in work with children from nought to six.

However, the old system can still be seen in the requirement that all staff working with children over three must have this training, while only a minority need do so for work with children under three.

Direct investment
How do the Nordic countries manage to have such high levels of training and such relatively good conditions of work for their staff? The answer is high levels of public funding, sustained over many years. The result can be seen in high levels of publicly-funded provision. The Nordic countries combine relatively high levels of provision for under-threes (even higher if you take into account the effect of parental leave on service use by very young children) and high levels for over-threes. Moreover, the Nordic countries have gone in for direct investment in services, rather than subsidising parents through tax breaks or credits. Public money goes to services - whether publicly or privately provided - and services pay well- trained staff according to nationally agreed conditions.

Under-threes
Outside the Nordic countries, as already noted, most countries have achieved or are aiming to achieve 100 per cent coverage for children over three in some form of publicly-funded nursery education or kindergarten setting. However, when we come to public provision for children under three, we find much more variation, from the relatively high levels in Belgium and France (partly due to admitting two-year-olds to nursery school) to the generally low levels, under 10 per cent, in most other countries. There is no doubt that it is provision for under-threes which is most underdeveloped.

Three other points round off this survey. First, I have focused my attention on centre-based services. But many countries also rely heavily on childminders.

However, childminding takes different forms. In the Nordic countries, most childminders are in organised schemes, recruited, paid and supported by local authorities or other publicly funded agencies. The same system can also be found in France and Belgium, although with private childminders more common.

Elsewhere, childminders are generally private and self-employed, with public authorities involved in varying degrees with regulation and support.

Second, private for-profit day nurseries on an extensive scale are typical of English-language countries - not just Britain and Ireland, but also the United States. They are much less common elsewhere. This seems connected to underdevelopment of public provision, and to an ideological sympathy to the idea of private responsibility for children and the provision of services through private markets.

Increasing provision
Third, there have been various strategies applied to increasing provision. Services in the Nordic countries grew under strong state encouragement and support, although now there is a high level of decentralisation to local authorities, with minimal or no national standards, but legal entitlements to provision which local authorities are obliged to meet.

In France, expansion of welfare provision for under-threes and other services for children has been stimulated by contracts made with local authorities by regional family allowance funds, financed by compulsory employer contributions and providing cash benefits to parents and subsidies to services. Local authorities signing contracts have to expand services to an agreed level, in return for which they get additional funding from their local family allowance fund.

The Netherlands introduced a 'stimulative measure' to boost provision, bringing together funding from central and local government and from employers on a voluntary basis.

The role of employers therefore varies. The Nordic countries have rejected it, treating early childhood services as a public responsibility. Employers in France play a major role in funding certain services - but through compulsory levies, which are managed for the general good. Dutch employers  are encouraged to be partners in funding, with a strong system of collective bargaining providing one means to pull in this funding.

Why Europe?
I want to end with a question which I should perhaps have begun with. Why bother with the rest of Europe? It's not because there may be a magic solution out there for us to copy. Solutions must always be home-grown.

However, I think some understanding of other countries - and not just how they do things, but why - can help us to create our solution by enabling us to view critically what we already have and question assumptions we often take for granted. We need to ask the most basic questions: