High-Quality Early Childhood Education and Care Systems - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 189/4

The European Pillar of Social Rights (1) states as its 11th principle that all children have the right to affordable early childhood education and care of good quality. This is in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2) which recognises education as a right, with the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child and with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 4.2 that foresees that all girls and boys should have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education by 2030.

In its Communication ‘Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture’ (3) the European Commission sets out the vision of a European Education Area acknowledging the role of early childhood education and care in laying solid foundations for learning at school and throughout life. The Council Conclusions on school development and excellent teaching (4) and the Council Recommendation on Key Competences for lifelong learning (5) reiterated the pivotal role that early childhood education and care can play in promoting learning of all children, their well-being and development.

Both policy makers and researchers recognise that it is in the early years (6) that children create the foundation and capacity to learn throughout life. Learning is an incremental process; building a strong foundation in the early years is a precondition for higher level competence development and educational success as much as it is essential for health and the well-being of children. Therefore, early childhood education and care needs to be regarded as the foundation of education and training systems and be an integral part of the education continuum.

Participating in early childhood education and care is beneficial for all children and especially for children in a disadvantaged situation. It helps by preventing the formation of early skills gaps and thus it is an essential tool to fight inequalities and educational poverty. Early childhood education and care provision needs to be part of an integrated child-rights based package of policy measures to improve outcomes for children and break intergenerational cycles of disadvantage. Improving provision therefore helps to deliver on commitments made in the Commission Recommendation on Investing in children: breaking the cycle of disadvantage (7) and the 2013 Council Recommendation of effective Roma integration measures in the Member States (8).

Participating in early childhood education and care has multiple benefits (9) both for individuals and for society as a whole, from improved educational attainment and labour market outcomes to fewer social and educational interventions and more cohesive and inclusive societies. Children who attended early childhood education for more than one year scored higher in language and maths in the PIRLS (10) and the PISA studies (11). Participating in quality early childhood education and care has also been shown to be an important factor to prevent early school leaving (12).

Education and care from the earliest stages has an essential role to play in learning to live together in heterogeneous societies. These services can strengthen social cohesion and inclusion in several ways. They can serve as meeting places for families. They can contribute to developing language competences of the children, both in the language of the service...