The UK’s preschool programme is one of the best in the world, providing high quality early childhood education, despite spending cuts imposed in recent years. These are the findings of a new comparative international study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
In its report, Starting Well: Benchmarking early education across the world, the EIU looks at how successful governments across the world are at providing a good, inclusive and affordable educational environment for children aged three to six years. Countries’ performances are ranked according to four categories: the “Availability”, “Affordability” and “Quality” of their preschool environments, as well as the broad “Social context”, which looks at how healthy and ready for school children are.
In the study’s league table, the UK comes out fourth overall, performing well in all four categories, and was only bettered by Finland, Sweden and Norway. Europe accounts for 16 of the top 20 countries.
The report also concludes that the UK is ahead of many countries by providing free universal preschool from the age of three to all children plus additional subsidies to disadvantaged parents through tax credits.
The researchers argue that increased government investment in early childhood education can, if directed well, benefit society. “It is about those very young children who are going to grow up as successful lifelong learners and citizens making an economic contribution to society”, says Professor Christine Pascal from The Centre for Research in Early Childhood, which co-authored the report.
The report can be found at:
www.managementthinking.eiu.com/starting-well.html#ixzz1z5V4cXJa
Great, so why are nursery nurses (practitioners) so badly paid ! Its about time the government looked into this if they are so keen on the importance of Early Years Education…