Despite its essential role, early childhood education (ECE) is undermined by chronic underfunding. Recognition of the importance of early childhood education, as well as the salaries, job satisfaction, working conditions, and status of ECE workers remain low. Meanwhile, private actors are working to take over the sector, filling the funding void left by governments and leading to a widening of the gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged.
Determined to effect change, education unions around the world are mobilising to promote the right to early childhood education and to end the teacher shortage in the sector.
On April 15, Education International (EI) affiliates that organise ECE workers came together to learn more about the findings of the OECD Starting Strong VIII report, to share insights from their contexts, and to strategise together about the way forward to inclusive and accessible early childhood education for all.
“Following years of union advocacy, there has been considerable political momentum globally around ensuring quality education for all and specifically towards more commitment and action for equitable, inclusive, and accessible early childhood education”, stated Haldis Holst, EI Deputy General Secretary.
Holst welcomed the United Nations Recommendations for a strong and resilient teaching profession in the sector and the initiative to introduce a new optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that “would explicitly recognise the right to early childhood education and would encourage governments to make pre-primary education universally available and free for all children”.
Holst emphasised that investing in early childhood educators, guaranteeing their labour rights, and ensuring that they have decent salaries and working conditions is key in this process.
OECD: Staff shortages are major barrier to provision of early childhood education
Carlos González-Sancho from the Early Childhood and Schools Division of the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills shared the main findings of the OECD’s Starting Strong VIII report with education unionists.
Research shows that early childhood education can improve outcomes for all children while reducing inequalities early in life, before they widen. However, many children miss out on early childhood education. Consequently, by the age of 5, disadvantaged and advantaged children already show large gaps in cognitive and social and emotional development.
Affordability, accessibility, and availability are all direct barriers to participation in early childhood education.
In many OECD countries, staff shortages remain a major obstacle to the expansion of ECE provision. Shortages of human resources are reported by a majority of ECE centres in all the countries participating in TALIS Starting Strong 2018, highlighting the sector’s inability to attract, train, and retain staff.
According to the OECD, low compensation and challenging working conditions undermine efforts to attract and retain qualified educators. Ensuring wages are aligned with ECE staff roles and responsibilities is essential to attracting more people to the profession and to incentivising quality.
Go Public! Fund early childhood education!
The findings of the OECD report resonated not only with education unions in OECD member states, but all across the world. Unionists from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America all expressed similar concerns about an underfunded sector and an undervalued and underpaid profession.
Unionists are rallying to EI’s Go Public! Fund Education campaign to call on governments to fully fund free quality public early childhood education for all and to invest in teachers, the single most important factor in achieving quality education. This means guaranteeing labour rights and ensuring good working conditions, as well as manageable workloads and competitive salaries for early childhood educators.
These union demands are aligned with the United Nations Recommendations that call for increased investment in early childhood education, fair pay and good working conditions for ECE personnel, quality training, and comprehensive policies to attract and retain teachers.
Education International and its member organisations will continue to advocate for early childhood education as an integral part of the right to education and for the rights of ECE workers everywhere.