Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-05-12-Speech-4-016-000"
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"en.20110512.9.4-016-000"2
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"Mr President, I am very pleased indeed to have the opportunity to present my report on early years learning in the European Union, which is an extremely important aspect of education that we have not really given much attention to before now.
I would particularly like to thank Commissioner Vassiliou and her cabinet with whom we have worked very closely on this, and also the Hungarian Presidency, which had early years learning as one of its priorities. This has been a very fruitful partnership all round and has allowed us to do the work reflected in this report.
I would also like to thank all the shadows from the other political groups. We have worked extremely well, as Mr Zver said, on his report, and we adopted the early years learning report in committee unanimously, which just goes to show that there is support across the political spectrum for this.
We know why really: one of the main reasons is that early years are so important. Early years intervention can make all the difference to children’s life chances, not only as they go through the educational system, but also later on in life. The research which has been done, most of which I am afraid is not within the EU, shows that, if you give children support and what they need when they are young, it helps them in later life: it cuts down on crime, improves health and cuts down on unemployment, therefore benefiting all of us.
The children themselves will, in most instances, achieve better at school, they will get better grades, they will have high employment levels and better employment and their family relationships will be better – as will their health. So we have everything to do on this and it is all beneficial.
Within the EU, there are a variety of types of provision for early years and in my report, we have said that we want to respect and maintain that. Each Member State does it differently, because early years has grown up within their own systems. It is made even more complicated by the fact that the age when school children start statutory education also varies from Member State to Member State. So we have not been looking at a ‘one size fits all’ solution, but we have looked to establish values and principles and guidelines for Member States to develop a European framework of shared goals and shared values and shared entitlements.
So that is what this report is about: it is actually about setting the framework. In order to do that, we have, of course, started with the child. We have advocated a very child-centred approach to early years education and care, with the best interests of the child at the heart of this. We have drawn on research from around the world, and my report looks at the following issues: engagement with parents, which is very important for early years for young children; staff and the quality of services and qualifications required; and integrating early years services with the rest of the education systems in Member States. So we have covered these key areas, and these are what we should be focusing on in future.
Staff qualifications are extremely important and they are very lacking in this area. There seems to be a view that anyone can look after little children, while that is actually not the case. We need to think hard about qualifications, and qualifications which can be transferred and recognised across the EU. We also need to look at access, so that all of those who need early years education services can get hold of them.
I have finished my four minutes and I want to keep some time for the end of this debate, so I would just like to end by saying that in this time of austerity and times of economic difficulties, we must make sure that early years is still on the agenda and we still do what needs to be done in this important area."@en1
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