Benchmarks for Early Childhood Services in OECD Countries

Abstract

The Innocenti Report Card 8 presents ten benchmarks for early childhood services. It represent a bold first step towards the ultimate goal of improving the lives of young children by enabling international comparisons to be made in the early childhood field, thereby encouraging countries to learn from each other’s experiences. The current paper provides some critical reflections on the challenges involved in establishing the principle of standard-setting in the early childhood field and suggests factors that should command our attention as the principle – as is hoped – becomes established and the process of standard-setting matures. Chapter 1 begins from first principles by asking: Can universal quality standards be agreed for early childhood systems? The challenges are indeed daunting. Definitions and instruments for measuring quality differ considerably across stakeholder groups, researchers and countries. There is a lack of reliable data on children from birth to 3 or 4 years. Essential concepts such as childhood, children’s services, early education and educator are understood in different ways by administrations in different countries. It is also necessary to consider critiques of the very idea of seeking universal standards, from the viewpoints of culturalist, socio-cultural and post-modernist scholars. These are respected currents of thought, and in response it is important to acknowledge that the goals of early childhood services, and the definition and pursuit of quality in them, should be an ongoing democratic process involving all the stakeholders. Despite these caveats, within the early childhood field there is considerable agreement on the structural and programmatic requirements needed to ensure quality. Documents from different countries and analyses of state policies by different experts are fairly consistent in their view of what the core elements of system quality might be. Chapter 2 outlines how a longer list of 15 benchmarks was generated through a number of consultations at the UNICEF-Innocenti Research Centre (IRC) with country representatives and individual experts from Asia, Europe and North America. This chapter considers in more detail the challenges raised by international benchmarking, both in general and specific to the early childhood field. It concludes that while they may not be able to reflect fully the interactional and pedagogical aspects of care, upbringing and education, or the quality of the living and learning experiences that children have in different settings, the benchmarks do call attention to basic conditions that allow good process to take place. Chapter 3 considers in detail the 15 benchmarks that made this original list, which were grouped into four areas: those focusing on child health and family support; those focusing on the governance of early childhood services; those focusing on access to services; and those focusing on programme quality. Each benchmark in turn is defined, the basic criteria proposed for its achievement are outlined, and there is an in-depth explanation of the thinking which lay behind its selection, with particular reference to early childhood system quality and conformity to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Throughout the process of selecting benchmarks, it was clear there would be a balance to be struck between the interest of early childhood professionals to do justice to the complexity of their field and the aim of UNICEF-IRC Report Cards to present data that is straightforward enough to capture the attention of a general audience and stimulate public debate. Chapter 4 explains the selection of the 10 benchmarks for the Innocenti Report Card 8. There is a gain in clarity and the language speaks more directly to the general reading public. However the risk inherent in achieving the aims of communicability and measurability is that insufficient attention may be paid to aspects of early childhood which are not so easily measured and communicated but which are no less important. The factors most significantly at risk of being underplayed by approaches which are necessarily more quantitative than qualitative are identified, bearing in mind that the Report Card’s overall objective is to stimulate debate on both dimensions. The paper ends with a reference section, followed by an Annex in which the performance of the 25 selected countries across the original, final 15 benchmarks is recorded, country by country.