Cito Conference Education for the Youngest: a Blessing or a Curse?
Intro
You asked me to explain briefly how the Dutch government regards the education of our youngest children, those aged under 6 years.
And I am very happy to do so.
I will mainly focus on our policy for tackling language disadvantages. We are doing this by ensuring that we reach all children with difficulties, and, on the other hand, by raising quality still further.
The importance of language
Every child has the right to a good start in the education system. To that end, a good command of the Dutch language is essential. It is a decisive factor for the success of children in other school subjects, in their further school career and later in society. Which benefits these children, but of course also our society as a whole.
The cabinet therefore believes it is important to raise the level of the language performance of children.
Tackling language disadvantages
In order to tackle language disadvantages at an early stage, this cabinet is devoting a great deal of attention to early childhood education. These educational programmes are mainly aimed at remediating language disadvantages among children. However, we are also paying attention to the social and emotional development of children.
The core of these programmes is learning together by playing together. Research has shown that early childhood education has beneficial effects on the development of young children and on the further course of their school career. Reason enough for us to devote as much attention as possible to this form of schooling. My contribution to the discussion here is therefore that as far as I am concerned, education for the youngest is a blessing.
For whom
The early childhood education programmes focus on children aged between 2.5 and 4 years who spend time at play schools and in day care. Often, the parents of these children are not highly educated. Experience has shown that it is these children in particular who are often faced with language disadvantages. In our country it is the municipalities that are responsible for pre-school education, while day care centres are left to the commercial market .
Early childhood education is intended for children aged 4 to 6 years and it falls under the responsibility of the schools themselves. They offer this type of education to primary years 1 and 2.
Currently, there are some 900,000 children in the age group 2.5 to 6 years. We will be focusing on over 120,000 of these children, the so-called “target group children”.
With our programmes we are currently reaching 53% of this target group in the 2.5 to 3 years age group. It is, however, our ambition to reach all children with an educational disadvantage by 2011 (in other words 100% of the target group).
This cannot be done without the early identification of language disadvantages. Institutions like Youth Health Services, which fall under the responsibility of the municipalities, could play an important role in this, because 98% of young children visit such institutions with their parents. In the next few months, I will examine whether, at the administrative level, I can encourage the municipalities to make agreements with these institutions regarding the early identification of language disadvantages.
In this regard, work on expanding the number of target group children reached is already in full swing. There are pilot projects in East Groningen, the four largest cities in the Netherlands and in South Limburg. The intention is to share the knowledge and experience gained in these pilots projects with other municipalities so that they too can ultimately reach 100% of the target group children.
Despite the successes of these pilots, we are well aware that reaching 100% of the target group is an enormous ambition.
Harmonisation
Although both play schools and child care centres have pre-school programmes, we can see that the play schools are accountable for the lion’s share: pre-school educational programmes are currently only offered by 2% of child care centres.
A contributing factor to this could be the fact that play schools fall under the responsibility of the municipalities, while child care centres are left to the free market. Child care is a rapidly expanding field. We are therefore striving for more pre-school and early childhood educational programmes to be offered at day care centres and to remove the differences between play schools and day care centres. In the time ahead I will be making a decision about the harmonisation of play schools and day care centres.
Funding
We are putting our money where our mouth is, because we are going to make a considerable financial contribution. Currently, 110 million euros a year goes to the municipalities for pre-school education and 60 million for early childhood education.
In the 2008 budget we have made available an additional 43.5 million euros for pre-school education. From 2011, there will be an annual total of 210 million euros available for early childhood and pre-school education.
This is almost a doubling of funds!
Raising quality
In addition to reaching more children, raising the quality of pre-school and early childhood education is an important aim of the cabinet. To achieve this improvement in quality we will be taking the following three steps:
1. From 2007, we will make considerable investments in the training of child carers for play schools and child care centres and in training teachers for the early grades of primary school. Up to and including 2010, 10,000 staff will be trained and we have reserved a total of 25 million euros to this end.
2. Various studies have shown that pre-school and early childhood education, among other things, is most effective if the children participate in it for four sessions every week. We will invest considerably in this in the time ahead.
3. Currently, pre-school educational programmes are only being monitored by the Education Inspectorate in the four large cities as part of pilot projects. The results of these pilots will soon be known. We will use the results to examine whether this monitoring of pre-school and early childhood education can be extended to include other parts of the Netherlands, and if so, how.
The pilot projects mentioned will also allow us to gain knowledge and experience on raising the quality.
Conclusion
And those are the three steps the cabinet will take to improve quality. And that is also the end of my brief overview of the vision of the Dutch government of education for our youngest children, aged under 6 years.
I trust that I have been able to clearly illustrate that we are focussing on two lines: ensuring that all children who need to be reached are reached and further improving quality, both with a central goal – tackling the language disadvantages among very young children.
I would like to wish you all an inspiring and constructive day.
Thank you for your attention.