Trends in Early

Childhood
Education
Trends That Are Changing
Early Childhood
Education Worldwide

The Two Sides of

Change: Growth
& Competition
 ECE TRENDS – THEME #1:
Rising Attendance (and Competition)

Even as most parents now value

early childhood education, preschool
attendance rates in North America,
most of Asia and Australia still lag the
OECD average of 77% and the 98%+ in
most European countries and New
Zealand.
However, these lagging countries are catching up fast, creating
opportunities for local providers.
 Australia adopted an early childhood curriculum,
the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), in 2012,
and attendance is growing from around 40% a few
years to 60% of all 3-year olds in 2013. East Asia is also
gearing up for universal pre-K.
There is less consensus on the value of early
childhood education in the United States. Thought
leaders like Zero To Three and Build Initiative are still
having to contend with public skepticism about early
education, not helped by the controversial
Vanderbilt study in 2015 that suggested gains from
preschool evaporate by age 8.
In general though, there is a lot of public resources
coming into early childhood education around the
world, leading to growing participation rates and
growth in programs.
 It’s an exciting time for early learning
programs. Demand for high quality programs
stems from:
• parent focus on learning outcomes
• public funding flowing into early education.

However, this growth is also attracting new

entrants, who are raising the competitive bar.
It’s a time of heightened competition and risk,
but also of heightened opportunity for high
quality programs.
 ECE TRENDS – THEME #2
Parents Focus on Quality
The ultimate quality rating is holding early
childhood programs to school-level
accountability, as happens in most of Europe and
New Zealand.
Australia launched the NQF, the National
Quality Framework, in 2012 and is making great
strides in improving the consistency of its early
childhood providers.
Canadian early childhood education and
childcare (ECEC) is playing catch up, but now
includes licensing in most provinces for providers
with more than a handful of children.
 Quality Improvement in the USA
There are moves afoot in the United States to
improve consistency and create a minimum level
of quality in early childhood education.
QRIS programs are now active in 40 US states.
A big part of this, is a focus on the educational
value of child care.
The US response to a call for quality in early
childhood education is QRIS, quality rating
improvement systems. It’s a state by state effort
to replace a patchwork of uneven accreditation
programs with uniform standards. QRIS is
voluntary, and is now active in 40 states, such as
the Early Achievers program in WA.
What is Quality?
It is interesting that despite different
philosophies, early childhood education around
the world share common cornerstones of
quality. Here are the common threads:
• The learning environment
• Parent engagement
• Teacher experience and training
• Center management
Improving program quality is a focus now for
early childhood educators throughout the
OECD. This is leading to major gains in parent
engagement and a renewed focus on staff
training, undoubtedly lifting learning outcomes.