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Early Childhood Education (ECE) consists of organized supervised programs with social and educational goals for children (of up to school entry age), in the temporary absence of their parents, and encompasses a diversity of programs, varying in hours of operation, ages of children and socio-economic status (SES) of families. Examples include part-day preschools, child care centres, early intervention and family daycare programs. Sufficient research exists to support the expansion of preschool and early childhood programs.
The most effective programs are those that start as early as infancy, are the most intensive, last the longest, are comprehensive and individualized, high-quality and continue in some form into the early school years. Early childhood programs and care that provide direct child interventions and promote close relationships with parents, as well as encourage effective parenting behaviours and promote children’s language, cognitive and literacy skills, are among the most effective programs with the strongest cost-benefit ratios.
Research has demonstrated that program quality makes a difference to cognitive development. Structural quality includes group size, staff-child ratios and teacher qualifications, staff wages and low teacher turnover. Process quality involves social relationships and interactions within early childhood settings.
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Resources must be available to ensure that poor children have access to high-quality care. Services must be adapted to communities’ cultural and socio-economic characteristics; -
Programs should provide services to parents that can enhance parenting skills, parent-child communication strategies and parental efficacy for child-rearing and for interacting with educational institutions; -
In addition to parental training programs, other interventions will be needed to prevent early difficulties in children that lead to high school failure and early withdrawal. These include after-school programs, summer school programs and in-school programs. Many promising programs have been or are being conducted with children in kindergarten and early primary school. It is extremely important to keep continuity of services between the preschool and school periods.
In order to prevent early difficulties in children that lead to high school failure and early withdrawal and in addition to early childhood programs, it has been proposed that:
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