Early Childhood Education and Care: Providing All our Children with the Best Start for the World of Tomorrow

The European Commission – in its Communication – is calling on Member States to ensure universal access to pre-school education and to improve the quality by ensuring staff are properly trained. High quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) enables parents to better reconcile family and work responsibilities, so boosting employability. ECEC supports children, not only in their future education but also in their integration into society, generating well-being, and contributing to their employability when they become adults. ECEC is also particularly beneficial for the disadvantaged, including those from migrant and low-income backgrounds. It can help to lift children out of poverty and family dysfunction, and so contribute to achieving the goals of the Europe 2020 flagship initiative European Platform against Poverty. High quality early childhood education and care can make a strong contribution – through enabling and empowering all children to realise their potential – to achieving two of the Europe 2020 headline targets in particular: reducing early school leaving to below 10%, and lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion.