Abstract
High-quality early education and care experiences are critical for children’s growth and development, families’ ability to work, and the future health of society. In Greece, with regard to research for children under 3 years of age in early childhood education and care services, the issue of quality has been only marginally researched. The lack of available information on the quality of childcare services has been widely documented. The purpose of this study was to investigate the quality of early childhood education and care services in North Greece. Nonprofit and for-profit centers (one hundred and thirty-one classrooms) for children under 3 participated in this study. For quality assessment, we used the ITERS-R scale (Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised). Results suggested the existence of mediocre average quality.
Highlights
In Greece, early childhood education and care services (ECEC) for children under 3 are represented only by “daycare centers/nurseries or crèche”.1 The daycare centers are run by the private and public sector
Results from this study suggest that all 131 daycare classrooms with children under 3-year old in Northern Greece qualifying for mediocre average quality
Five of the seven subscales presented mean scores between minimum (3) and good (5) while the subscales “Program structure” and “Activities” were the subscales with lower score. These findings support results previously reported by Petrogiannis (2002) using the ITERS (M = 3.50) and Rentzou (2011) using the Infant/Toddler Environmental Rating Scale-Revised Edition (ITERS-R) (M = 3.23); none of the childcare centers assessed were found to have high quality scores, but ranged between minimal and good
Summary
In Greece, early childhood education and care services (ECEC) for children under 3 are represented only by “daycare centers/nurseries or crèche”.1 The daycare centers are run by the private (for-profit) and public (through municipalities for profit and nonprofit) sector. In Greece, early childhood education and care services (ECEC) for children under 3 are represented only by “daycare centers/nurseries or crèche”.1. The daycare centers are run by the private (for-profit) and public (through municipalities for profit and nonprofit) sector. Municipalities’ daycare centers come under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior and admit children from the age of 6 months up to 2 1⁄2 years. The Ministry of Labor, Social Security and Social Solidarity is mainly responsible for the private daycare centers and admits children from the age of 2 months up to 2 1⁄2 years. Municipal Daycare centers operated either by a municipal legal entity (nonprofit) or by a municipal utility enterprise or in the context of a respective municipal service (for-profit).
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