Supervising Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland

Abstract

The Act on Early Childhood Education and Care takes a stand on premises, learning environment, qualification of personnel, aims, quality assessment, and supervision. Pursuant to the Act on Early Childhood Education and Care, the National core curriculum for early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a national regulation that provides guidelines for the national steering of ECEC. On a governmental level, supervision is very important when it comes to management, and in addition to that, assessment and supervision of the supervisory authorities are a part of the ECEC director’s tasks. Supervision is a part of strategic leadership. From the beginning of the year 2020, the Regional State Administrative Agency has implemented a supervision programme in which the focus is to check that there is adequate staffing throughout the day. There is a systematic sampling of children’s and personnel’s presence in early education centres of the municipal ECEC. By examining the adult–child ratios, senior officers in the Regional State Administrative Agency judge if the situation is satisfactory. The study was conducted to see whether municipalities are complying with the law. A low ratio affects the quality of early childhood education and care. The supervisory authority may issue an admonition for future operations to the organiser of ECEC. The sampling is ongoing, but the results so far show that municipal ECEC follows the ratio very well. During 2020, the Regional State Administrative Agencies supervised 1596 municipal day care centres. The adult–child ratio overrun percentage was only 0.45 per cent.