Progress, Change and Development in Early Childhood Education and Care

International Perspectives

Elizabeth Coates, Dorothy Faulkner

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138391673
• eBook ISBN: 9781317245483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals set out targets aimed at creating a safer, more prosperous, and more equitable world. If these goals were to be achieved, children's lives would indeed be transformed. In this collection, achievements against these targets are identified, with each contributor examining the progress made in early years provision in Australia, China, England, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, and Sweden. They highlight the priorities and agendas of their respective governments, and focus on the trends and issues which are particularly relevant to each situation, thereby revealing the social and educational inequalities that persist across countries.

A common theme running through this volume concerns the political tensions that arise when governments and educators hold fundamentally different views about the nature and purpose of early years education and the needs of children and families. It is clear that although the past two decades have seen many changes in attitude towards the importance of the early years of life; politically, economically, and environmentally, much still remains to be done if the Millennium Development Goals for young children and their families are to be fully met. Despite this, this volume demonstrates that those who work in this area continue to experience a deep concern for the well-being of young children, which transcends cultures, frontiers, and political and sectarian divides. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Early Years Education.

A participatory process of developing a recommendation for the government about the education of children from birth to three years: the case of Portugal

Teresa Vasconcelos

Lisbon School of Education, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon

This article describes how the Portuguese National Council for Education initiated a participatory process that gave rise to the development of a ‘public statement’, ‘The Education for Children from Zero to Six Years’. This statement and its 11 recommendations were directed towards the Ministry of Education and called for a shift in support for children from zero to three years (traditionally the responsibility of the Ministry of Solidarity and Social Affairs), from being primarily care-based to being primarily rights-based with an educational focus. This participatory process is described and analysed. It involved broad participation by civil society with representation from a range of stakeholders, including family representatives, professional associations, unions, experts and researchers – all of whom brought their experience, insights and knowledge. This article also describes how, in spite of a change of government, the statement has continued to influence early year educators and policy-makers. Finally, the rationale underlying the statement's 11 recommendations, and the recommendations themselves, are outlined and discussed.

Introduction

In 2011, the Portuguese Conselho Nacional de Educação (CNE, National Council of Education) presented a public statement containing a ‘historical’ set of recommendations to the Government (specifically to the Ministries of Education and Social Affairs) concerning ‘The Education of Children from Zero to Three Years’ (see Vasconcelos 2012). The CNE is a consultative council, under the responsibility of the Assembleia da República (National Parliament), and is comprised of representatives and stakeholders from Portuguese civil society. The CNE's public statement was approved unanimously on 29 March 2011, and consisted of a set of 11 recommendations, which will be outlined in this paper. The author of this paper (herself a Council member for three years) was the Rapporteur.

This was the first time that the provision for the education of children aged zero to three (traditionally the responsibility of the Ministry of Solidarity and Social Affairs) had been discussed seriously by the Educational Council and assumed to be the responsibility of both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Affairs. The statement was developed in response to the 2001 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) evaluation of early childhood education (ECE) and care in Portugal (Starting Strong I). This evaluation recommended that Portugal should pay greater attention to the provision of education for children under three years, rather than persist in its view that service provision for children and families should be limited to childcare and support for working families.

The statutes of the CNE identifies its role and responsibilities as follows:

The National Council of Education (CNE) is an organization, with advisory functions, whose President is elected by the National Parliament.

The National Council of Education (CNE) is responsible for issuing opinions, statements and recommendations about all educational issues, either by its own initiative or by responding to solicitations that may be proposed by the Government or the Assembly of the Republic.

The National Council of Education (CNE) promotes the participation of various social forces, cultural and economic, aiming at a social dialogue and consensus-building in Education. (Law n° 31/87)

The first of the 11 recommendations from the 2011 public statement approved by the CNE declared that education from zero to three years should be assumed as a child's right and not just a social need. This point of departure influenced all subsequent recommendations in the document.¹

This article describes and evaluates the participatory process that led to the development of this public statement. Initially, however, background information is presented that describes the current situation in Portugal in relation to the education of babies and children under three. This is followed by an account of initiatives that took place during the late 1990s, which brought the situation of three- to six-year-old children to political attention and led to the consequent expansion and development of new educational settings for this age range.

Background information

In order to understand the wider context in which the 2011 public statement was developed, it is important to understand its background. In 2005, a report on the Application of the Convention of Children's Rights in Portugal declared that:

(…) There is a need to develop strategies based on children's rights which must be coordinated at a multi-sectorial level so as to affirm the superior interest of the child. This superior interest of the child should become a departure point to plan the organisation of education and care services. Those services need to be coherent with present international legislation guidelines about children from birth to eight years old. It is vital to support children under three years old, by means of pedagogical supervision and not only being guided by issues of care and support to working families. (CNDC, 25)

This statement from the 2005 report clearly highlights the situation existing in Portugal and the need to pay further attention to supporting children under three years of age. As Portugal has been one of the European countries where most women work outside their homes while they have very young children, there is a pressing need for improvement in this area. Women have four months of maternal leave, after which parents have to find their own support for the care of their young children. Fathers are entitled by law to have a paternal leave of one month, but most of them do not use it, either because of work pressure or because they think it is unnecessary.

In 2008, the CNE produced a report entitled ‘Education from Zero to Twelve Years – A Continuum’, coordinated by I. Alarcão (CNE 2008).² This included a review of available research evidence, including my paper ‘Early Education and the Promotion of Social Cohesion’ (Vasconcelos 2009a). Following this report, a Statement (‘Parecer’) to the government was produced. This highlighted the need to consider the continuum of education from birth to age 12, and called for a specific focus on the continuum from birth to age six.

It is also important to note that in 2010 for the first time, again at the instigation of the CNE, the Annual Report on the State of Education introduced a section on the educational situation of children under three. Until that time, this had been totally absent from the Council's educational guidelines. The 2010 Annual Report stated that:

Between 2000 and 2009 the coverage rates of care structures for children from zero to three years – crèches and child-minders – had an increase of 76.3%, having registered in the present year a coverage rate of 34.9%. This situation allowed Portugal to achieve the European goal of 33% of children attending services for zero to three by 2010. (CNE 2010)

This increased rate of coverage, however, has not led to an improvement in the educational quality of crèches or other types of provision (childminders, etc.) despite the fact that the Ministry of Social Affairs has a strategic plan for this age level, and the Ministry of Education has one for children from three to six years.

The main problem is that working with under-threes is not considered educational; therefore, early childhood teachers (in Portugal we call them ‘early childhood educators’) who work with babies and small children do not have these working years counted towards their ‘teaching career’. This has profound consequences for their wages, benefits and retirement allowances and leads to a situation of rapid staff ‘turn-over’. As soon as they can, early childhood educators move into teaching posts where they are working with three- to six-year-olds, so that they can enjoy those benefits. For early childhood educators who work with zero- to three-year-olds, this situation is socially unjust as they have the same years of training as those who work in kindergartens or primary schools, though with different training curricula. It is also extremely problematic in terms of continuity of care; in any one school year, children under three may have one, two or three early educators in a row.

According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, since 2001, the support for ‘social action’ (my inverted commas) relating to children below the age of three years has increased through conventions, cooperation programmes and agreements with private social institutions (‘charities’) or through direct support to families. During the last five years, a special programme called PAPI (Programa de Apoio à Primeira Infância, a support programme for children from zero to three years) was introduced to develop service provision for this age group by increasing the financing of private, non-profit social service structures. To date, however, there is no direct initiative by the state to create public services for children under three.

Immediately following the presentation of the 2011 public statement to parliament and the government, general elections took place and a new government came into power. Immediately, this government worsened the situation of babies and children under three by introducing new legislation (Ministry of Solidarity and Social Affairs, Portaria n° 262, 31 August 2011), outlining the criteria for the installation and operation of crèches. This new legislation signalled a clear step back from the recommendations contained in the CNE's 2011 statement. According to this new legislation, it is no longer a requirement to have a licenced educator for babies and children under 18 months of age, the number of children per educator has been increased from 10 to 15 and special child-to-educator ratios are not considered necessary for the integration of children with special needs.

This legislation also ignored previous OECD recommendations, as the following brief history of educational reform in Portugal illustrates. In 1994, a ‘parecer’ (statement) was developed at the CNE, by then-councillor João Formosinho. Between 1995 and 2005, this statement prompted the government to produce a significant strategy supporting the expansion of public, pre-school education for three- to six-year-olds and the creation of a national network of kindergartens (public, private and non-profit) under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. This increased the coverage to 75% (89% for five-year-olds), from a starting point of less than 30%. This was a very significant effort and has been described in detail by Vasconcelos (1997). The OECD (2001) considered it highly innovative due to its provision for the appointment of a professional early educator to every classroom (instead of teacher-assistants) and the creation of a set of curriculum guidelines in 1997 for children from three to six years. These curriculum guidelines were negotiated and discussed throughout one school year by professionals in the field, together with researchers and other stakeholders, prior to the publication of the final version (Vasconcelos 2003). Again, the OECD (2001) regarded this process of negotiation as exemplary (OECD 2001: ‘Providing Curricular Guidance in Portugal’, 111). Nevertheless, the insights of OECD external examiners outlined in the ‘Country Report’ (DEB/OCDE 2000) recommended that new educational policies still needed to be developed for babies and children under three years.

At the same time, researchers and professionals in Portugal were calling for policies for three- to six-year-olds to be expanded to cover the education of children from zero to six years. Financial restrictions, however, did not permit the Ministry of Education to take this further step, and this has had the long-term consequences for children under three that have already been outlined above. A further study by the present author for the CNE (2003), evaluated the government's expansion and implementation plan (1995–1999) for children aged three to six years, and again affirmed the need to pay attention to educational intentionality in settings for children from birth to age three. This study took the view that it was political error that the new Law for Early Education did not take this age group into account.

The importance of investing in the early years (0–3)

The set of 11 recommendations is based on research that has investigated the importance of investing in the early stages of development. Shonkoff and Philips (2000, 311) present evidence from recent brain research, neuroscience data and early intervention studies that has established that high-quality interventions between zero and three years have a measurable influence on children's developmental trajectories, particularly those whose lives may be threatened by socio-economic disadvantage, family instability and diagnosed incapacities. Neuroscience studies emphasise the central role of positive early experiences in the lives of young children as a condition for their support and adaptation to life. If early experiences are toxic or negative, children are at risk of developing dysfunctional patterns of behaviour. The Portuguese researcher Gabriela Portugal has concluded that if three quarters of the brain develops after birth, in close relationship with the external environment, this suggests that evolution has equipped human beings with an ‘ecological brain’ (2009, 46) that throughout life is dependent on the development context. She proposes, therefore, that the child has an ecological brain. She argues that, from a neurological standpoint, there is no one right way to promote positive development, since warm and responsive care may take different forms, depending on the social, cultural and emotional contexts of individual children's development. By contrast, since the late 1990s, Shore claims that careful, attentive, affectionate and responsive early interactions are vital to the health and well-being of all young children (Shore 1997) regardless of the particular developmental context. Similarly, Shonkoff and Philips (2000) maintain that, from an early age, a child's powerful capacities, complex emotions and social competencies should primarily be developed through interaction.

Brain research, therefore, has highlighted the importance of environmental conditions for all developmental processes that take place in the brain. Ea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: International Perspectives on Progress, Change and Development in Early Childhood Education and Care, 1993 to 2013
• 1. A participatory process of developing a recommendation for the government about the education of children from birth to three years: the case of Portugal
• 2. A review and analysis of the current policy on early childhood education in mainland China
• 3. Early childhood development in South Africa – progress since the end of apartheid
• 4. Trends and tensions: Australian and international research about starting school
• 5. Educational innovation between freedom and fixation: the cultural-political construction of innovations in early childhood education in the Netherlands
• 6. Promoting critical awareness in the initial training of preschool teachers in Greece: resistance and perspectives
• 7. Preschool a source for young children’s learning and well-being
• 8. Mothers’ experiences with a mother–child education programme in five countries
• 9. Early childhood policy and practice in England: twenty years of change
• Index