Unfortunately, I was unable to connect with my international
contacts throughout this course so I have had to revert to the alternate assignment.
Therefore, I went to the Unesco website and explored its contents.
Under the quality tab I clicked on the related information
tab and read a paper on Early Childhood Workforce in Developed Countries. The
article talked about how different countries view and educate their child care
workforce. For instance in New Zealand, Spain and Sweden the teacher has
emerged as the ‘core’ profession. The new education qualifies a new profession:
teachers working with children from birth to 19 and in a range of education
settings. Teachers qualify with an individual profile which indicates in which
service and with which age group of children they are best qualified to work,
and this profile is constructed through the specializations that students opt
to take after the 18 months general course which all students follow. This
paper also discussed the wages for child care teachers and the increased costs of
having an educated workforce. The paper posed the question “Who will pay for a
properly qualified workforce?” That’s a question I would like an answer to
myself….
Under the Investment and Financing tab I learned that the
greatest difficulty faced by countries in their efforts to expand and improve
the quality of early childhood care and education is the mobilization of
resources. It discussed how in many developing countries early childhood
education is overshadowed by other pressing priorities, such as universal
primary education.
The 1990 Jomtien
Declaration on Education for All (EFA), stated that countries should view early
childhood as part of basic education. Once countries recognize the positive
value of state investment in this area, the next challenge is to mobilize
funds. In general, government funding for early childhood is extremely
small. The authors of this paper believe private sector involvement using a
market approach may also ensure services are delivered more effectively.
However, governments must use complementary financing measures to ensure equity
of access for poor and disadvantaged children, as a pure market approach to
increasing the level of early childhood provision has been shown to favor the
privileged, who can afford the service
Finally, under the access
and equity tab I read a brief on Vietnam entitled, Supporting the Poorest: Vietnam’s Early Childhood Policy. I found
this brief quite interesting regarding how the funding for early childhood is
split, between the poor and the poorest. When asked if early childhood
education should be made compulsory in an effort to receive more funding the
answer was no, and it is not an option being explored by the Government, (though
at the provincial level it has been announced as a policy, helping local
authorities boost political and investment commitments). The interviewee stated
that in Vietnam, state budgets are to be spent strictly on the poorest.
I have attached the link if
you are interested in browsing the site. Browse the News link, there are several
interesting articles to be found there as well.
2 comments:
Crystal,
Limitations in resources seems to be a recurring theme that many countries are facing in being able to adequately meet the needs of the early childhood field. Especially in developing countries, governments have more pressing issues to deal with which results in funding for ECE becoming a lesser priority. Do think that in the presence of limited funding from governments, the answer lies in engaging the private sector to support ECE?
Crystal,
Thanks for the summaries of the sections you read. My contact from Sweden has told us how much the government does for early childhood education. I think we have a lot to learn from them.
In terms of resources, I think things will not improve until we can find a better balance between federal and state investments in early childhood education. While I do not think that the federal government should dictate how states educate children, I do believe that the states should not have as much flexibility as they currently do.
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