More public investment for children and young people needed – especially in times of economic downturn
COFACE expert group meeting on Early School Leavers (ESL) and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC)

Over 20 experts participated in our experts’ seminar on the 25th June in Brussels, covering 12 European countries.

Why now, and what did we want to achieve?

The European Commission organised for the 26th June a stakeholder’s consultation on the same topics, and before participating at this meeting, we wanted to make sure that we truly understand the issues at national level and from the point of views of families. Therefore we asked our members to give us the situation in the countries, and express their requests as to what the European Commission and what Member States can and need to do. ECEC and ESL are very much linked.

Annalisa Cannoni from DG EAC gave us the general background of the Commission’s work, followed by national studies, research results, good practices, and we also had some very stimulating discussions in break-out groups.

The ECEC discussion was looking at both quality and quantity. In terms of quantity, we are looking at the Barcelona targets, to provide childcare places for at least 33% of young children under 3, and for 90% of children over 3. There is a great variety in the performance of Member States, which is not necessarily reflected in the employment rates of women.

We also learnt that Early School Leaving is the bottleneck for realising the Smart Growth pillar of the EU 2020 strategy, this is especially relevant as a plethora of research, studies and reports underline that children's early school experiences have a huge impact of how well they will do later in life, and in preventing drop out. Yet again, in some EU Member States, even if the Kindergarten attendance in close to 96%, the high rate of Early school leaving persists. This is where the importance of the quality of the learning and the teaching and the relationship between the children, the school and the parents is extremely high.

There is simply not enough space here to go into detail of all the discussions and presentations; however COFACE will continue to consult member organisations on ESL and ECEC. Both topics are at the heart of the concerns of family organisations and are high on the agenda of the EU2020 strategy.



The report of the meeting and the presentations can be found here:

European Commission: presentation on ESL and presentation on ECEC

ESL-ECEC, Clf, Slovakia
ESL, Unaf, France
ECEC, Ldf, Belgium
ECEC, Gezinsbond, Belgium
ECEC, Unaf, Spain
ECEC, AGe, Italy
ECEC, Fps, Belgium
ECEC, Nct, UK