Is Finnish early childhood education going private? – Legislative steps and local policy actors’ representations of privatisation

Abstract

In this article, we contribute to the research on the process of privatisation of Finnish early childhood education (ECE), describe how the privatisation has proceeded within the legal framework and how profit making has become possible in ECE. Furthermore, we analyse how local key policy actors justify the privatisation of ECE and what the problems represented to be in local privatisation policy are. The data for the first part of this research were chosen from critical legislative changes concerning private daycare/ECE from a period 1973 to 2018. The second part of our research data consists of in-depth interviews with two leading managers in ECE administration and two politicians in one Finnish municipality. The findings reveal that privatisation has become part of Finnish ECE through tacit and invisible steps, both in legislation and in municipal services illustrating hidden privatisation. At the national level, the process towards private ECE has been a part of social and health care reforms without a deep analysis of daycare/ECE and the needs of this service. At the local level, the privatisation of ECE was seen as an attempt to address economic problems as well as challenges in the balance between the supply of and the demand for ECE services.