Europe and Central Asia

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services for children under six years of age play a fundamental role in laying strong foundations for lifelong learning and wellbeing, especially in the first three years of life. Quality ECEC services can make an extraordinary difference in children’s lives, especially for the most disadvantaged. Research indicates that children from vulnerable groups derive even greater benefit from high-quality ECEC than their peers from more advantaged families.

Our Recommendations:

European Commission identified staff professionalization as one of the key issues for the ECEC field. In many countries, part of the workforce is represented by low-qualified ECEC assistants. Studies have shown that assistants have fewer chances for qualification and professional development and are not taken into account in policy documents. Improving the competences of all staff (core practitioners and assistants) would improve the services’ quality, which would in turn help eliminate barriers in front of families in using ECEC services.

The early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce plays a critical role in the quality of provision. There has been growing interest by policymakers at the local and international levels and ample research has shown a clear consensus about the importance of quality in ECEC. This research article focuses on the role of assistants in ECEC based on a holistic conceptualization of education and care and examines 15 European country profiles.

The InTrans project has identified five key actions that policy decision-makers, providers and leaders should undertake – in social dialogue with trade union organizations – to enhance the participation of children and families to Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in times of crisis and beyond.

The goal of the research ‘Bulgaria grows with its children: Building professional competences for early childhood development’ (hereinafter referred to as ‘research on the early years workforce’ and ‘the research’) is to outline the main directions for improvement of the professionalization of the early years workforce on the basis of data – quantitative and qualitative – as well as to formulate recommendations for policy development in this area.



This summary shares the main results and recommendations derived from this research.

This report sheds a light on some of these disparities for the early years workforce. It includes a review of the relevant literature; an analysis of quantitative data covering a large representative sample of workers in England; and 40 interviews with early years practitioners, setting managers and local policy-makers. The most common barriers identified in all three strands of research were pay, work demands, certain demographic characteristics, training and the organisational climate of the early years provider. 

These Guidelines are the outcome of the second part of the SEED project, during which a group reflection pathway, called WANDA1, was piloted with 80 ECEC practitioners with the aim to help them to deal with daily challenges in their practice so they could better support the socio-emotional well-being of children in their care.

There is mounting evidence on the positive link between high quality early childhood development (ECD) personnel and the physical, social, and cognitive development of young children. Despite this growing body of knowledge, the early childhood workforce continues to face challenges such as inadequate training, low remuneration, and a lack of professional recognition.

The Early Years Professionals’ Survey 2019, conducted by SIPTU Big Start Campaign, was carried out to gather information on the attitudes of those employed in the early years sector in relation to their work and involvement in early years settings and changes they thought could be made to improve the sector. Using the 3,200 survey responses this report gives a picture of the attitudes, experiences and expectations of those working in Ireland's early years sector.