UNESCO- Early Childhood Care and Education

Since I chose to do the alternative assignment, this week I was able to visit the UNESCO website (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), and explore the early childhood education section. Three new insights that I gained from this website were:

1) Important conditions are that learning environments should be well-resourced and that child-staff ratios should reasonable. The notion of a reasonable ratio differs across countries, but fewer numbers help children to generate peer communication and engage together in project and group work according to their affinities and interests. The presence of sufficient numbers of staff also ensures that each group can enjoy the support of a trained professional who will lead children toward the attitudes, skills and knowledge valued in a particular society. In Sweden, for example, national statutory requirements for child-staff ratios do not exist, but the average across the age group 1-6 years is 5.6 children per trained staff member. In the pre-school class for 6-7 year olds, the national average is one teacher + assistant for 13 children (UNESCO, 2004, September).

This is something I believe should be put in place in the United States. We have classes with upwards of 30 students with only one teacher. We cannot possibly reach every student, and attain to their specific needs, without extra support and help.

2) Even with higher levels of education, work in early childhood services may still be less socially valued than, for example, teaching older children in school. A high proportion of students taking the new integrated Swedish teacher education, in which they need only choose their area of specialization after starting their course, are choosing to specialize in teaching school-age children. Preferring to work with older children may reflect the continuing lower status of early childhood work, and the inferior employment conditions that still apply to teachers in Swedish early childhood centers compared to schools (UNESCO, 2004, October).

This boggles my mind that Early Childhood teachers are valued less. In my opinion we should be valued more because this is such an important age where the children’s minds are like sponges and they learn the basics that will carry them through their educational journey.

3) Brazil has a mandatory education fund for primary education called FUNDEF (Fund for the Development of Primary Education and Teacher Development). The scheme, which requires 60% of the local governments’ – the states and municipalities – education budgets to be spent on primary education, helped increase net enrolment in primary education from 92.7% in 1994 to 96.4% in 2000. This increment of net enrolment, which brought the country closer to the ideal of universal primary education, is significant, given that the growth rate of enrolment normally slows down at the higher level. More importantly, the fact that it is mostly the children from marginalized populations who benefited from the initiative makes FUNDEF a politically important achievement (UNSECO, 2003, October).

References

UNESCO. (2003, October). Mandatory Funding for Early Childhood Education: A Proposal in Brazil. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137406e.pdf

UNESCO. (2004, October). The Early Childhood Workforce in ‘Developed’ Countries: Basic Structures and Education. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137402e.pdf

UNESCO. (2004, September). Curriculum in Early Childhood Education and Care. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137401e.pdf