Series: CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy
Poverty is still a real issue within Britain today and this essential series provides evidence-based insights into how communities and families are dealing with it.
Published in conjunction with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics, this series draws together fresh research and sheds important light on the impact of anti-poverty policy, focusing on the individual and social factors that promote regeneration, recovery and renewal.
CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy
This chapter examines the extent to which disadvantaged children are able to access high quality early childhood education and care in Norway. Universal access to “kindergarten” is legislated as a social right for children age 1-6, and indeed the great majority of children in this age group – 90% – are enrolled. The private sector is quite heavily involved in actual service delivery (with about half of all institutions privately owned), but this has not prevented the system from delivering generally high quality provision, in large part because of the education levels of ECEC staff, including a high share of graduate pedagogues (teachers specialising in the early years). The chapter discusses recent policy efforts which have focused on expanding access to services at a reasonable cost for parents as well as strengthening the quality of services, with positive results in relation to the inclusion of children with low income or low educated parents.