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one of our chosen countries: Netherlands

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Childcare and early childhood education (VVE) falls under the authority of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

From the moment a child is six weeks old until the moment it leaves primary school, it can go to childcare. In the Netherlands there are various forms of childcare, all of which have to meet quality requirements. Childcare is a term for various childcare options that do not fall under primary education. There are various forms of childcare facilities in the Netherlands. The main types can be divided into three forms:

* Daycare for children from 0 - 4 years old.

* Out-of-school care for 4 - 12 year olds.

* Childminder services for children aged 0 - 12.

Education is mandatory for all children from the age of 5 and from the age of 4 all children in the Netherlands have the legal right to education. Most children go to primary school ( basisschool) when they are 4 years old. Groups 1 and 2 (ISCED 0) of the primary school are groups for 4- and 5-year-olds in which they are prepared for the education that will take place in group 3 (ISCED 1) of primary school.

This chapter deals with daycare (0 to 4 years) and early childhood education for children up to 6 years old. It covers the childcare facilities to which the childcare benefit (kinderopvangtoeslag) applies and describes information about early childhood education, called voor- en vroegschoolse educatie (VVE) in Dutch. VVE is offered at primary schools and childcare centres.

Early childhood education (VVE)

It is important to note that VVE is not a separate, independent form of daycare or school, but a subsidized support measure to prevent or reduce educational disadvantages. VVE is offered in childcare centres and primary schools through special educational programs. The purpose of early childhood education (VVE) is to reduce or prevent educational disadvantages in children between the ages of two and six. Children learn through play with the support of VVE-programs and specifically trained childcare workers or teachers.

Playgroups and childcare organisations provide early childhood education for 2,5 to 4-year-olds. Through play, they learn the skills they need to make a good start at primary school. Overall responsibility rests with the municipal authorities, who also determine which children are eligible. Referral usually takes place via the baby and toddler clinic.

Early childhood education for 4 and 5-year-olds is provided in the first two years of primary school (basisschool). The school itself is responsible for the quality of early childhood education.

Early childhood education programmes

A variety of early childhood education (VVE) programmes are available, most of which are geared to helping pupils with language disadvantage. They also target the child's socio-emotional, cognitive and motor development. The most commonly used programmes are Kaleidoscoop, Piramide, en Uk en Puk.
Quality of childcare and early childhood education
To safeguard the quality of early childhood education (VVE), there must be at least two qualified professionals to every group of children. The maximum group size is 16. The Municipal Health Services (GGD) and the Dutch Inspectorate of Education are responsible for monitoring the quality of early childhood education.

The Municipal Health Service (GGD), commissioned by municipalities, checks whether childcare organizations meet the legal quality requirements. Municipalities must take enforcement action if organizations do not meet the requirements. Each year, the Education Inspectorate examines whether municipalities perform their statutory childcare duties. More information about supervision of childcare and early childhood education can be found in chapter 11.1.
Funding and affordability of childcare and early childhood education
The Dutch government reimburses a substantial portion of the cost of childcare. The childcare benefit is called kinderopvangtoeslag. The amount that parents are entitled to receive is dependent on several factors such as family income, the number of children and the working hours of parents.

For participation in VVE programs, parents of children with a VVE indication are also entitled to a contribution towards costs.

Primary education is funded by the government. Primary education in the Netherlands is free, this also includes the first two years (ISCED 0) of primary school for children aged 4 and 5. The legal right to education starts at age 4 and the compulsory education age is 5.The government pays for education so that all children can go to school regardless of the parents' financial situation.

Childcare reforms

In 2018 and 2019, measures were taken to improve the quality of childcare. On 1 January 2018, the Innovation and Quality of Childcare Act (wet IKK) entered into force and the Harmonization of Childcare and Playgroup Work Act (Wet harmonisatie kinderopvang peuterspeelzaakwerk) came into effect. The reforms improve the quality and accessibility of childcare.

More information about the reforms in childcare can be found at veranderingenkinderopvang.nl (only available in Dutch).

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Early childhood education and care - Eurydice - European Commission

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Childcare and early childhood education (VVE) falls under the authority of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. From the moment a child is six weeks old until the moment it leaves primary school, it can go to childcare.

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Australia early years framework

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Early Years Learning Framework, NQS, State Curriculum - Australia

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The Early Years Learning Framework is one of several key documents for child care providers in Australia. Read more on the EYLF, NQS and state curriculum.

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Michael Klapdor and Dr Shannon Clark, Social Policy

Key issue
Child care affordability and accessibility will remain a significant issue in the 46th Parliament as the impact of the Coalition Government's new child care funding system is examined, and with the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens both proposing significant changes at the 2019 Election.
Funding for early childhood education will also remain a contentious issue, with the Government continuing to resist calls from stakeholders for ongoing funding for preschools and expanding preschool funding to three-year-olds.

Child care

At September 2018, there were 1.3 million children from 931,030 families accessing child care services approved to receive the Australian Government's Child Care Subsidy (CCS) payment. Approved services include long day care centres, family day care services, outside school-hours care services and some in-home care providers.

The Australian Government is the main source of overall funding for child care services, primarily through fee subsidies, while state and territory governments regulate child care providers and set quality standards agreed to under the National Quality Framework. The Productivity Commission found that in 2014-15, the Australian Government covered at least 63 per cent of the costs of the child care system with 37 per cent covered by fees paid by families. The Australian Government will spend an estimated $8.6 billion in 2019-20 on child care subsidies and direct support for services.

The Child Care Subsidy

The CCS is intended to assist families with the costs of child care. It is paid directly to providers, who pass the subsidy on to families in the form of a fee reduction. The CCS commenced on 2 July 2018 as part of the Coalition Government's Jobs for Families package, which saw two previous payments replaced: the Child Care Benefit and the Child Care Rebate. A supplementary payment was also introduced at the same time. The Additional Child Care Subsidy (ACCS) provides additional assistance for children at risk of abuse or neglect, families experiencing financial hardship, those transitioning from income support to work, grandparent carers on income support, and some low-income families. The ACCS also replaced a number of previous payments.

The Child Care Benefit was an income-tested and activity-tested payment paid at set hourly rates and targeted at lower-income families. The Child Care Rebate was not means tested and provided a 50 per cent rebate on out-of-pocket child care costs, up to a maximum annual amount ($7,613 in 2017-18).

The CCS is income-tested and activity-tested. The income test assesses a family's income and determines its rate of CCS: a percentage of either the fee charged or a set hourly fee cap, whichever is lower. The activity test determines how many hours of child care per fortnight can be subsidised by the CCS, based on the amount of time parents/carers are engaged in approved activities, such as work or study.

Impact of the new child care package

Limited data is available on the impact of the CCS's introduction; available data only covers the first three months under the new system. The Department of Education and Training's (DET) data shows that, compared to the previous quarter, there was a 3.7 per cent increase in the number of children accessing child care and a 5.5 per cent increase in the number of families using approved services since the introduction of the CCS. However, usage rates vary between quarters and a comparison between September 2017 and September 2018 suggests a more modest 0.3 per cent increase in the number children and 3.2 per cent increase in the number of families using approved care following the introduction of the CCS.

Modelling by the DET prior to the CCS commencing suggested that around 70.7 per cent of families would receive increased assistance under the CCS compared to the previous system. Around 24.3 per cent would receive decreased assistance and the remainder would have no change.

Unlike previous publications, the DET's September 2018 quarterly report did not include information on costs of care before and after government subsidies as a percentage of disposable income for families in different income brackets. This makes it difficult to analyse how child care affordability has changed.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) gathers data on out-of-pocket child care costs (the costs of care after subsidies) in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI data shows that out-of-pocket costs reduced by 11.8 per cent in the quarter following the introduction of the CCS. Compared with the same period in the previous year, costs to families in September 2018 were down by around 8.5 per cent, despite average hourly fees charged by providers increasing by 5.8 per cent over the same period. However, this drop in out-of-pocket-costs is not as significant as in 2008, when the Rudd Government increased the percentage of fees covered by the Child Care Rebate. That measure saw costs to families drop by 22.9 per cent in the quarter following the increase.

Concern for vulnerable children

Peak body, Early Childhood Australia, and the largest child care provider, Goodstart Early Learning, have both raised concerns that there had been a large drop in the number of vulnerable families claiming for the ACCS compared to the numbers claiming under the programs the subsidy replaced. They suggested that tightened eligibility criteria to access support while in temporary financial hardship, and more stringent approval processes for children at risk of abuse or neglect (such as new time limits on certificates issued by services that a child is at risk), could be a reason. The differing eligibility criteria and levels of support offered under the old and new child care schemes make it difficult to directly compare the impact of the changes on vulnerable families using just the total numbers accessing support.

Reform proposals

At the 2019 Election, both Labor and the Greens proposed significant changes to the CCS to provide higher subsidies to those on lower incomes. The Coalition did not make any commitments regarding the CCS.

Under the current CCS design, eligible families with a combined income up to around $67,000 per annum can receive a subsidy worth up to 85 per cent of the fee charged or the hourly fee cap set by the government, whichever is lower. Labor proposed increasing the 85 per cent subsidy to 100 per cent for families with incomes up to $69,000 per annum. This 100 per cent subsidy would taper down to 60 per cent for families with an annual income of $174,000, meaning that all families with incomes below $174,000 would receive a higher CCS rate compared to the current system. Labor also proposed a review of the impact of the system on vulnerable and very low-income families and in a separate policy, proposed funding wage increases for child care workers. The proposed changes to the CCS alone were expected to cost around $4.0 billion over four years.

The Greens proposal would increase the subsidy rate to 100 per cent of fees charged for families with incomes up to $172,000. The policy would also abolish the activity test. The Greens did not provide a separate costing for its CCS changes, but its entire early childhood education and child care package (which included expanding universal access to preschool to three year olds) was expected to cost $20.4 billion over four years.

Figure 1 illustrates the Labor and Greens CCS policies compared to the current CCS.

Figure 1: Comparison of current Child Care Subsidy with Labor and Greens proposals

Source: Parliamentary Library estimates.

Is the system meeting its objectives?

A key issue for the 46th Parliament is whether or not the Coalition's Jobs for Families package is actually delivering on its objective to make child care more affordable, thereby removing a key barrier for parents and carers to participate more in the workforce. The Grattan Institute identified child care as the highest hurdle faced by women wanting to work more, particularly due to the combined effect that taxes, child care costs and the withdrawal of benefits (such as Family Tax Benefit) have on take-home earnings. Miranda Stewart from the Australian National University's Tax and Transfer Policy Institute found that the interaction of taxes, child care and benefits can mean a second earner in a low-income family loses 85 to 95 cents of every extra dollar earned by increasing the number of days worked in a week. In some circumstances, a second earner would not take home any extra income by working more.

Another significant issue is whether the new system is providing enough support for vulnerable children to access child care services. A Senate committee inquiry into the first attempt to legislate the Jobs for Families package heard from a number of stakeholders concerned about the implementation of the ACCS and the need to ensure vulnerable children did not miss out on support. Since implementation, these same groups have noted the drop in the number of vulnerable children supported and raised concerns about the ACCS's eligibility criteria and administrative processes.

Early childhood education

Early childhood education (ECE) services provide structured, play-based learning programs delivered by qualified teachers to children in the year or two before full-time school. They are known differently across the states and territories as preschool, kindergarten and pre-preparatory.

Providing children with access to appropriate ECE has positive impacts on children's educational outcomes at school and helps to build foundational skills that are important as they grow older.

The ABS reported that in 2018 there were 342,479 children aged four or five years old enrolled in a preschool program in Australia. 86 per cent of four-year-olds and 21 per cent of five-year-olds were enrolled.

The Report on Government Services 2019stated that in 2017 90.1 per cent of children were enrolled in an ECE program in the year before school, compared to 92.4 per cent in 2016. It also stated that, at 94.8 per cent, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children had a higher enrolment rate compared to all children.

However, there are differences between how many children are enrolled in ECE programs and how many are attending. The latest figures from the ABS suggest that of all children enrolled in a 600-hour ECE program, around 84.9 per cent are attending (see Table 1). This goes down to 81.5 per cent for children living in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, and 72.5 per cent for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Table 1: Children enrolled and attending ECE program (600 hours) in year before school

Source: Parliamentary Library calculations; figures drawn from ABS, Preschool education, Australia, 2018, cat. no. 4240.0, ABS, Canberra, 2019.

Funding for early childhood education

State and territory governments are primarily responsible for funding ECE services. The Australian Government provides a funding contribution to ECE through national partnerships (NPs).

Since 2009, there have been a series of short-term NPs. The 2019-20 Budget provided $453.1 million over two years to extend the National Partnership on Universal Access to Early Childhood Education to cover the 2020 school year.

Under 'universal access' arrangements within the NPs, in place since 2008, state and territory governments have committed to providing all children with access to a quality ECE program for 600 hours per year (or 15 hours per week) in the year before full-time school. The benchmark measure for access is 95 per cent of children enrolled in an ECE program. According to the Productivity Commission's performance reporting dashboard, all jurisdictions met or exceeded the benchmark in 2017, achieving full, or close to full, enrolment.

Extending access to preschool education to three-year-olds

Starting Strong 2017: Key OECD Indicators on Early Childhood Education and Care states that the number of years of ECE is a strong predictor of later performance in and out of school. The report states:

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 data show that children who attended early childhood education for at least two years perform, on average, better than others at age 15.

The report also notes that the benefits of quality ECE are particularly pronounced for disadvantaged children.

In 2017, state and territory governments commissioned an independent review-the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools through Early Childhood Interventions (the ECE review)-to consider the most effective early childhood interventions. The ECE review was to complement the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools.

The report of the ECE review, Lifting our Game, made 17 recommendations, including that universal access to ECE programs be extended to all three-year-olds, with access prioritised for children from disadvantaged families and communities. The report argued that 'the evidence points to this as the single most impactful reform Australia could undertake'.

Expanding access to ECE to two years before school would require additional expenditure. However, the ECE review argued that this would be a sound long-term investment with benefits that span multiple domains, including productivity gains, health benefits and reduced costs from crime. It reported that modest estimates of benefit-to-cost ratio are returns of two to four dollars for every dollar invested in universal preschool.

The ECE review report also recommended that Australian governments work towards investing in early childhood education to at least the OECD average as a proportion of GDP.

In 2014, among OECD countries for which data was available, Australia was ranked towards the bottom on early childhood education expenditure. Australia's expenditure on ECE was 0.2 per cent of GDP, below the OECD average of 0.6 per cent.

Labor and the Greens both proposed to expand access to ECE to three-year-olds during the 2019 election campaign.

Labor proposed to establish a new National Preschool and Kindy Program that would guarantee access to two years of ECE programs for children for 15 hours per week. Labor also committed to guaranteeing current arrangements for four-year-olds over the longer term, investing an additional $1.7 billion into ECE. This investment into ongoing funding was welcomed by the Australian Education Union as providing certainty to the sector.

The Greens also proposed to guarantee ECE access to all three and four-year-olds, increasing the number of hours to 24 per week. This was part of their $20.4 billion plan for ECE and child care.

The Coalition Government has resisted calls to extend ECE to three-year-olds, arguing that issues of lower participation rates among four-year-olds in specific communities need to be understood before considering expanding access to three-year-olds.

As part of the 2019-20 Budget measure to extend the NP, the Coalition Government committed $1.4 million over two years 'to develop and implement strategies to increase preschool attendance rates among disadvantaged and Indigenous children'.

Early childhood education workforce

Providing high quality ECE programs requires a suitably skilled, professionalised early childhood workforce. The report of the ECE review identified remuneration as a barrier to attracting people to, and retaining them in, the early childhood workforce. With the national Early Years Workforce Strategy lapsing in 2016, the report recommended that Australian governments agree to a new national workforce strategy. Recommended areas of focus included improving leadership, pre-service training, professional development, workforce standards, attraction and retention, and workforce diversity.

Labor and the Greens both proposed to address workforce issues during the election. Labor announced it would 'scrap upfront fees for 10,000 early education students studying at TAFE'. As noted above, Labor also promised to increase the wages of early childhood educators, stating that it would fund pay increases of 20 per cent over eight years. Labor had provisioned $537.0 million over the forward estimates for the measure.

The Greens stated their commitment to developing a workforce strategy with the sector and unions to improve pay and working conditions.

Where to next for early childhood education?

Australia is not alone in facing funding, access, participation, and workforce challenges in relation to the provision of ECE. International evidence from the OECD suggests that 'significant public funding is necessary to support a sustainable and equitable early childhood system'.

However, the benefits are likely to be worth the investment. The downstream effects of children receiving two years of ECE before full-time school are well-established, particularly for disadvantaged children. In its report, Preschool-Two Years Are Better than One, the Mitchell Institute argues:

If Australia is to remain globally competitive into the future, it is vital that we invest in programs that promote opportunity, boost our human capital and close the disadvantage gap.

Pressure for the Australian Government to work with states and territories to expand the provision of ECE programs is likely to continue in the 46th Parliament.

Further reading

M Klapdor, ' Impact of the new child care subsidy ', FlagPost, Parliamentary Library blog, 12 April 2019.

M Klapdor, Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Jobs for Families Child Care Package) Bill 2016, Bills digest, 39, 2016-17, Parliamentary Library, Canberra, 2016.

S Pascoe and D Brennan, Lifting our game: report of the review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools through early childhood interventions, Victorian Government, Melbourne, 2017.
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Child care and early childhood education

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Michael Klapdor and Dr Shannon Clark, Social Policy Key issue Child care affordability and accessibility will remain a significant issue in the 46th Parliament as the impact of the Coalition Government's new child care funding system is examined, and with the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens both proposing significant changes at the 2019 Election.

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Inclusive practice and quality of care in the Dutch ECE system

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Inclusive practice and quality of care in the Dutch ECE system

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Abstract

The present study examined how in the context of the hybrid, privatized and marketized Dutch early education and care system (ECEC), childcare organizations respond to the public task of supporting inclusion and equity in an increasingly diverse society. Applying cluster analysis on the organizational characteristics of a nationally representative sample of 117 centers providing education and care for 0- to 4-year-old children, three types of organizations were identified that differed strongly on cultural inclusion and observed quality in the classroom. Socially engaged (for-profit and not-for-profit) professional organizations served proportionally more children from low-SES and immigrant families, provided higher quality to these children, and were culturally more inclusive than both market-orientated and traditional professional-bureaucratic organizations. The findings are discussed with regard to the question how hybrid ECEC systems can be governed to optimally serve the public goals of inclusion and equity.

Introduction

Diversity in socioeconomic status, ethnicity, culture, religion and language has grown rapidly in Western societies (Crul et al. 2013; Vertovec, 2007). Related to this, the divides between the rich and the poor, between the high and low-educated, and between main stream and cultural minority communities have become more visible and pervasive (Borgna and Contini 2014; Putnam 2015; Reardon 2011; Riederer and Verwiebe 2015; Rözer and Van de Werfhorst 2017). Traditional inequalities in educational and social opportunities between the lower and higher social classes have remained and are nowadays in some cases outflanked by new disparities relating to the cultural and linguistic background of ethnic minorities and newcomers to society. The Netherlands, despite a long tradition of social equity, tolerance, and cultural and religious pluralism, is not an exception to this (Driessen 2012; Kremer et al. 2014).

There are, however, two complications. Concerns about the integration of immigrants and cultural minorities have in recent years led to a shift in the national integration policies of many countries, including the Netherlands, towards a stronger emphasis on assimilation, putting the national language and cultural customs, norms and values in the foreground in education in general and in ECEC in particular. This may jeopardize the sense of belonging of minority communities and their willingness to participate (Celeste et al. 2019; Malik 2015; Penninx 2008; Slot et al. 2018c; Ünver 2019). The second complication relates to the progressive privatization and marketization of national ECEC systems in the past decades. In many countries, including the Netherlands, ECEC systems are nowadays complex hybrid markets with a mix of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations providing care and education to young children. The question arises whether system hybridity is compatible with the values of equity and inclusion (Ball 2009; Kaga et al. 2010; Knijn and Lewis 2017; Lloyd 2020; Penn 2011; Vandenbroeck 2017).

In this study we take the Dutch hybrid, privatized and marketized ECEC system as a case in point. We examine how in the context of this system organizations providing care and education to young children deal with the complications of diversity and respond to the public task of supporting equity and inclusion. In the Netherlands, 24.4% of the total population has an immigrant background, both Western (10.5%), being mostly immigrants from member states of the European Union, and Non-Western (13.9%), being mostly immigrants from former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean and from labor migration countries such as Morocco and Turkey (Statistics Netherlands 2020a; b). Adopting an organizational-sociological approach, we evaluate to what extent ECEC organizations succeed in providing a culturally inclusive climate of high quality that may support diverse children's sense of belonging, development, and educational opportunities.

Privatization and marketization of ECEC

Privatization (withdrawal of the state from the supply-side) and marketization (the shift from supply-driven to demand-driven provision in a competitive market) have been introduced in the public domain of ECEC in many countries in the past decades, challenging ECEC organizations to reconcile divergent public and private objectives in a single organizational configuration (Ball 2009; Denis et al. 2015; Skelcher and Smith 2015). State withdrawal implies larger responsibilities of private parties for general public tasks but, in combination with increased freedom of choice, also leads to differentiation between organizations providing particular services (Ball 2009; Brandsen et al. 2006; Van der Werf et al. 2020), also in ECEC (Brennan 2016; Naumann 2011). Differences between organizations and patterns of segregation may emerge, for example, regarding the demographic background of the children cared for, the flexibility of use, the work climate, and the quality of education and care provided to children. Studies in Australia (Brennan 2016; Press and Woodrow 2018), Germany (Ernst et al. 2014; Mierendorff et al. 2018), the United Kingdom (Blanden et al. 2016; Lloyd and Penn 2012), and the Netherlands (Kok et al. 2020; Noailly and Visser 2009) have shown that privatization and marketization tend to strengthen unequal access to high-quality ECEC, favoring high income groups, and withdrawal of provision from remote, rural or poor areas with low purchasing power.

To counteract the tendencies of differentiation and unequal access to quality, and to ensure minimum quality of ECEC for all children, governments usually rely on statutory quality standards and, in many countries, national curricula or national curriculum guidelines. Even in deeply privatized ECEC systems, such as in Australia and the United Kingdom, extensive standards have been defined to regulate the admission of providers to the market and to monitor their performance (Brennan 2016; Knijn and Lewis 2017; Naumann 2011; Newberrry and Brennan 2013; Penn 2011). Prominent in these frameworks are the requirements regarding structural quality (Howes et al. 2008), referring to the group size, the children-to-staff ratio, the number of square meters per child in the center, basic safety and health measures, the training level of staff, and several related conditions. In addition, these frameworks specify value-based socialization goals and sometimes include detailed curriculum and pedagogy guidelines to regulate the process quality of the care and education provided (Naumann 2011; Penn 2011), referring to the emotional and educational aspects of the day-to-day social interactions in the ECEC center (Howes et al. 2008).

In an analysis of the quality frameworks and national curricula of 12 European countries, including countries with predominantly public ECEC systems (e.g., Denmark, Finland, Norway) and countries with privatized and marketized ECEC systems (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom), Sylva et al. ( 2015) found strong agreement across countries on structural quality characteristics and high consensus about a child-centered play-based pedagogy. In addition, most frameworks were rather detailed regarding basic academic and social-emotional competences as desired child outcomes of ECEC. Frameworks and curricula also included references to multicultural education and care, cultural inclusion and multilingual development, however mostly as open recommendations without specifying measures that should be in place or requirements regarding staff competences (Sylva et al. 2015: p. 45).

A key question is if statutory frameworks and curriculum guidelines can impact practice in the desired way, in particular regarding the quality and inclusiveness of the day-to-day processes of education and care. There are three reasons for doubt. First, setting easy to measure, 'hard' minimum structural quality standards may ensure a lower bound of quality but does not guarantee equally high process quality for all children. Studies indicate that the relationship between these characteristics and the quality of the education and care processes is overall weak and not consistent (Dennis and O'Connor 2013; Howes et al. 2008; Slot 2018a; Slot et al. 2015a, b; Sylva et al. 2004). Instead, 'soft' conditions, usually not addressed in national frameworks, such as the opportunities for continuous professional development for staff and the collegial support experienced at the ECEC center, have been found to be stronger related to process quality (Bloom et al. 2010; Dennis and O'Connor 2013; Slot et al. 2015a, b; Tsigilis et al. 2006). Second, official curriculum guidelines and core goals for development and learning may only be weakly related to the actually implemented curriculum (Sylva et al. 2015). This may hold true especially for open, less easy to monitor aspects such as dealing with diversity and promoting inclusion and sense of belonging among children. Third, regulation by statutory frameworks, curricula and curriculum guidelines assumes a mechanistic chain between the framework and desired practice (Nutt 2002), and neglects the mediating and moderating role of the organizations that provide care and education (Clegg and Hardy 1999; Mintzberg et al. 2005; Moore 2014). Particularly in hybrid systems, ECEC organizations face different, sometimes opposing forces and institutional logics, and organizations may differ especially in their solutions to reconcile market concerns and public concerns (Quinn et al. 1988; Skelcher and Smith 2015).

Organizations as mediating links

Following sociological contingency theory, we presuppose that organizations adapt their strategies and change their structure and internal culture in response to the complex and continuously changing environment (Denis et al. 2015; Mintzberg et al. 2005). A key question for the present topic is how organizations providing ECEC within a privatized and marketized hybrid system, such as in the Netherlands, adapt their organizational strategies in the wider context of increasing diversification. More specifically, we examine whether the divergent demands and incentives in this complex environment are associated with organizational differentiation, and how this differentiation in turn relates to the inclusiveness and quality of the care and education provided to children.

To examine these questions and to identify different types of organizations, focusing on the Netherlands, we used Mintzberg's typology of six basic organizational configurations (Mintzberg 1983; Mintzberg et al. 2005; Quinn et al. 1988). The simple structure organization, according to this typology, is characterized by direct, centralized staff supervision by one boss, often the owner. This type of organization has a small-scale organic structure, limited resources for overhead tasks such as professional development, and responds to the demand for flexible client-centered services in a local market. Although making profit is a goal, there is not a strong pull for commercial expansion. The professional bureaucracy emphasizes the continuous training of skilled autonomous professionals to maintain high-quality standards. This type of organization is characterized by a hierarchical administrative structure, line-management, standardization of procedures throughout the organization, and responds to a stable, non-competitive environment that demands complex services of high quality. The commercial division organization in Mintzberg's typology is a large organization characterized by a strong market-orientation. This type of organization responds to the pull to provide flexible, client-centered complex services in a competitive (regional, national or even global) market by splitting into semi-independent divisions with strong middle management, while the pull to increase profits and dividends for shareholders dominates decision-making. The adhocracy, according to Mintzberg, reflects organizations with little formalization and high mutual adjustment that deal with complex or innovative issues but usually on a temporary project basis, while the machine bureaucracy refers to strongly hierarchical, technocratic organizations with low autonomy for employees and a high degree of job specialization for highly standardized (often simple) products, either for public or commercial purposes. Finally, the missionary organization responds to a pull to contribute to societal change. This type of organization is built around a core value-based mission, which is shared among the team of staff. There is little hierarchy and standardization, and there is no commercial goal.

The Dutch ECEC system

The Dutch ECEC system was traditionally split into different types of care and education for different age groups in the age range from 0 to 4 years, with different funding systems, different public tasks, and subjected to different government bodies (for overviews, see Akgündüz and Plantenga 2014; Knijn and Lewis 2017; Slot 2018b). At age four, children in the Netherlands are eligible for full-day kindergarten, which is part of the publicly funded primary school system and free of charge. The system for under fours was formally privatized and marketized in 2005 (Dutch Government 2005). In 2010, new legislation was introduced to harmonize the ECEC sector (Dutch Government 2010). A single statutory quality framework was introduced for all types of ECEC regardless of legal entity of the organization and type of funding. The harmonized quality framework specifies age-dependent equal structural quality and health and safety conditions, and defines equal developmental goals and global curriculum guidelines for all ECEC services. Furthermore, within this harmonized system, all services are equally eligible for additional subsidy within the national educational equity policy to reach out to disadvantaged children and to provide them with high-quality early education and care.

The national quality framework, while referring to children's rights and implying equality of opportunities, lacks explicit requirements regarding cultural diversity and inclusion. The framework, however, does state that Dutch is the only language to be used in ECEC, with the exception of Frisian, the officially recognized heritage language of the province of Friesland in the Netherlands (Dutch Government/Childcare Act 2020). This statement reflects the shift in the public and political discourse in the Netherlands in the past decades from embracing multiculturalism to an emphasis on assimilation (Bonjour and Scholten 2014; Penninx 2008).

In a previous study (Van der Werf et al. 2020), the Mintzberg framework was applied to data of a national study on the quality of daycare and preschool provision collected in 2012 to address how ECEC organizations adapt to the hybridity of the Dutch ECEC system. In a sample of 127 ECEC organizations information was obtained from managers on organizational characteristics. Using cluster analysis, four types of organizational configuration were identified, matching the Mintzberg ideal-types: the professional bureaucracy, the simple structure firm, the market-driven division organization, and the missionary organization, while also revealing organizational hybridity. The most hybrid type of organization showed a mix of characteristics of the professional-bureaucratic, service-oriented commercial and socially engaged missionary organization. This type was found to provide the highest quality, both in terms of the inclusive work climate experienced by staff, the implemented curriculum reported by staff, and the independently observed quality of care and education provided to children, using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS Toddler version; La Paro et al. 2011), an internationally widely used observation instrument to assess the emotional and educational process quality of the provided care and education. Considering the similarities and differences between the four types, we concluded that the missionary social engagement of ECEC organizations was the most distinguishing characteristic, reflected in team cohesion, outreach activities to disadvantaged families and endorsement of an educational-emancipatory mission.

Current study

The current study aimed to replicate the previous findings regarding organizational configurations using recent data from a nationally representative sample of ECEC centers collected in 2017 and 2018. In addition, the current study focused specifically on the topic of diversity and inclusion. Although cultural diversity and inclusion are not explicitly addressed in the Dutch national quality framework for ECEC, the increasing cultural diversification compels ECEC organizations to respond and take a stance. This pertains to debated issues such as the use of heritage languages, the adaptation of everyday care practice to specific cultural and religious preferences, if and how in the daily program of activities cultural differences and other manifestations of diversity are addressed, and to what extent organizations support children with special and additional needs, including children who have to learn the majority language and basic pre-academic skills for a fair start in formal education. Based on the previous findings, dating from 2012 and briefly discussed above, we expected to find different types of organizations in the Dutch ECEC system in 2017-2018, with types also showing organizational hybridity to some degree (Van der Werf et al. 2020). We furthermore expected that these types of organizations would differ in the extent to which they would serve children with diverse backgrounds and provide them with both a culturally inclusive climate as well as high educational quality. We addressed the following research questions: (1) Are there, as in the previous study, different types of organizations in the Dutch hybrid ECEC system that represent distinct adaptations to the wider social and policy context? (2) If so, do the identified types of organization differ in performance with regard to (a) the proportion of children with special and additional needs or from low socioeconomic status families and non-Dutch minorities served by the organization, and (b) the inclusiveness and quality of education and care provided to the children?

Method

Participants

The present study used data collected in 2017 and 2018 within the Dutch national daycare quality monitor study, commissioned by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (Slot et al. 2018b). The study was approved by the Ethical Review Board of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University (reference 19-270). Approval included the data management plan and privacy protection measures, designed in compliance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulations. The monitor started in 2017 and applies a rolling sampling method. Every year, a sample of different forms of early care and education provision is drawn following a stratified sampling model according to region of the country, degree of urbanization, and size of the center, to create a large, nationally representative sample over consecutive years. The annual samples include center-based full day care for 0- to 4-year-olds, half-day education programs for 2½- to 4-year-olds, after-school care for 4- to 12-year-olds, and nonfamilial home-based care for 0- to 12-year-olds. For the present purpose we focused on half- and full-day education and care programs for under fours, currently used by about 70% of Dutch children in this age-range. In 2017, 64 centers were sampled (positive response rate 47.4%) and in 2018 a new set of 64 centers were added (positive response rate 36.6%), roughly equally divided over half- and full-day programs. Reasons for non-response did not reveal systematic biases and mostly concerned lack of time and the response rates were similar to the response rates of previous Dutch ECEC studies (Slot et al. 2018a; b, c). In each center, one group with one or two teachers per group was randomly selected for the study. For each group, in addition to classroom observations by research assistants, the teachers were invited for a personal interview using a structured questionnaire, while the managers of the centers were asked to fill out an online structured questionnaire. The questionnaires were developed based on previous studies into structural, process and curriculum quality, and approaches to staff professionalization in ECEC (2020; Howes et al. 2008; Jenkins and Duncan 2017; Sylva et al. 2015; Van der Werf et al. 2020; Zaslow et al. 2010). In 2017 and 2018 combined, information was obtained from teachers for 119 (93.0%) and from managers for 117 (91.4%) of the 128 participating centers. The final sample size was 117. Note, however, that there were occasionally missing data, which will be discussed below.

Measures and procedures

Organizational characteristics (managers)

Managers filled out an online questionnaire addressing the center's organizational structure, culture and policies as derived from the Mintzberg framework outlined above. Based on the managers' responses, the following organizational characteristics were defined (descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1):

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of the organizational characteristics (managers' reports; N = 117)

Legal entity was indicated by the managers on a four-point scale, representing the main types of legal entity in Dutch ECEC. For the planned cluster analysis (see below, " Analysis " section), to obtain a more equal score distribution, the scale was recoded into the values 0 (for-profit single-owner firms, for-profit companies with shareholders and/or private equity) and 1 (non-profit foundations).

Profit goal represented whether, according to the managers, positive results of the business operations, if any, remained within the center or wider organization of which the center was part (e.g., spent on additional professional development) or were also partly distributed as dividends to shareholders and/or private equity investors, dummy-coded into 0 ('no profit to shareholders; positive business results remain in the company') or 1 ('profit is distributed to shareholders').

Number of services referred to the different types of childcare services provided by the center and center's wider organization, concerning in particular full-day care, half-day care, a targeted education program, integrated full-day care and kindergarten, and after-school care for older children. If one or two services were provided, the number of services was recoded as 0, if more than two services were provided the number of services was recoded as 1.

Presence of the manager at the center was based on a single item, asking managers to indicate how many days per week they, as managers, were present at the local center. The values ranged from 1 ('less than 1 day per week') to 6 ('all days of the week'). Low presence was regarded as indicating hierarchical line-management with a specific focus on staff supervision, high presence as indicating decentralized all-round management, associated with performing general managerial tasks, including administration, staff supervision, finance and planning (Mintzberg 1983; Mintzberg et al. 2005; Quinn et al. 1988; Van der Werf et al. 2019). For the subsequent analyses, to obtain a more equal distribution of scores, the scale was recoded into two levels, with values 0 ('maximum 2 days present') and 1 ('3 to 5 days present').

Managers' perceived autonomy was based on seven five-point scales (Cronbach's alpha = 0.693) asking the managers to rate the degree of perceived autonomy in their daily work regarding administration, educational decision-making, human resource management, and budgeting. Based on median split, the scale was recoded into 0 (values 1 to 2.99) and 1 (values 3.00 to 5; 'high perceived autonomy').

Size of the center was based on managers' answers on the question how many licensed teachers (by head count), excluding support staff and interns, were employed at the center. Based on median split, the scale was recoded into the values 0 (1 to 10; 'small') and 1 (11 or more employees; 'large').

Percentage of staff with tenure (fixed, non-flexible contracts) is the reported number of licensed teaching staff with a fixed tenure divided by all licensed staff at the childcare center, ranging from 0 to 100% in the current sample. For the purposes of the present analysis, based on median split, the variable was recoded into 0 ('less than 80% of staff are tenured') and 1 ('80% or more of the staff are tenured').

Flexibility of users' contracts was based on three items, asking managers to indicate on a three-point scale to what extent parents were allowed to bring or pick-up their children at flexible times and to change days (1 'not flexible', 2 'somewhat flexible', 3 'flexible'; Cronbach's alpha = 0.868). The mean scores were recoded into 0 (original value 1; 'not flexible') and 1 (original values 1.01 to 3; 'flexible').

Positive diversity and inclusiveness climate was based on four dichotomous items, addressing: how important it is to the center, according to the manager, to provide equal opportunities to all children (with answers ranging from 1 'not important at all' to 5 'very important', which, because of a skewed score distribution, were recoded into 0 'not important at all to important' and 1 'very important'); whether children are allowed to use their heritage languages at the center (0 'no', 1 'yes'); if centers provide information in several languages and try to communicate with parents in their heritage languages (0 'no', 1 'yes, as much as possible'); and if the center would adapt to particular religious or cultural preferences for food and dressing (0 'no', 1 'yes, as much as possible'; Cronbach's alpha = 0.381). Although Cronbach's alpha was below standards, we decided to keep the variable as a meaningful count of the number of implemented measures of positive adaptation to cultural diversity, ranging from 0 to 4. For the subsequent analyses, the final scale was dichotomized into 0 (scores from 0 to 2) and 1 (scores 3 and 4, indicating an overall positive diversity and inclusiveness climate).

Supply of different forms of professional development was an eleven items variable, asking managers to rate whether educational staff were regularly provided with different types of personal professionalization activities with values 1 (hardly ever), 2 (yes, but incidentally) and 3 (yes, systematically) (Cronbach's alpha = 0.678). Examples of activities are attending work-related courses, receiving feedback based on video observation, and receiving personal coaching. For analysis purposes, based on median split, the scale was recoded into 0 (values 1 to 1.99; 'hardly ever to incidentally at most') and 1 (values 2 to 3; 'systematically').

Team-professionalization was based on eight items, asking managers to indicate the frequency of professionalization activities involving the whole (or most of the) team of educational staff, with values 1 ('never') to 7 ('every day') (Cronbach's alpha = 0.746). The scale was recoded based on median split into 0 (values 1 to 3; 'never to once a month') and 1 (values 3.01 to 7; 'more than once a month').

The organization's mission profile was determined based on each manager's responses to a series of questions in which they had to compare the external mission profile of their organization with other ECEC organizations, rating their answers on a six-point scale with values 1 'not characteristic for my center at all compared to other centers' to 6 'very characteristic for my center compared to other centers'). On conceptual grounds, two mission profiles were distinguished and used in the subsequent analyses.

The service profile comprised four six-point scales (Cronbach's alpha = 0.819). A high score indicated that, according to the managers, providing affordable and flexible care and meeting parents' needs in terms of flexible opening hours was regarded by the manager as particularly characteristic for the center. The scale was recoded based on median split into 0 (values up to 3.34; 'low to moderate service profile') and 1 (3.35 to 6; 'high service profile').

The inclusive profile was based on three six-point scales (Cronbach's alpha = 0.749). A high score indicated that, according to the manager, the center, compared to others, emphasized the importance of giving children in disadvantaged situations a good start, paid positive attention to cultural diversity and strived for inclusion of children with special or additional needs. The scale was recoded based on median split into 0 (scores 1 to 3.68; 'low to moderate inclusive profile') and 1 (scores 3.69 to 6; 'high inclusive profile').

Contact with parents group-wise indicated whether centers did (scored 1) or did not (scored 0) organize one or more of the following three types of group-wise activities for parents, based on the managers' reports: thematic conferences (e.g., on topics of child rearing), regular meetings to discuss the center's policy, and festivities such as exhibitions, shows, sports tournaments or barbecues (the final score is the average of three dichotomous items; Cronbach's alpha = 0.464). For the current purpose, the scale was recoded based on median split into 0 (values 0 to 0.50 relatively low on providing group-wise activities for parents') and 1 (values 0.51 to 1.0; 'relatively high on providing group-wise activities for parents').

Contact with parents through outreach activities indicated to what extent, according to the managers, the center actively reached out to parents by implementing one or more of the following type of activities: conducting home visits, involving interpreters and/or volunteering mediators to establish contact; and providing support information and materials for educational activities at home (average of three dichotomous items; Cronbach's alpha = 0.361). For the current purpose, the scale was recoded based on median split into 0 (values 0 to 0.50 'relatively low on outreach activities towards parents') and 1 (values 0.51 to 1.0; 'relatively high on outreach activities towards parents').

Finally, the center's local relations were assessed with two indicators. Contact with the local primary school(s) was based on eight five-point scales (Cronbach's alpha = 0.892), asking managers, for example, to indicate the degree of information sharing, educational planning and joint coordination of activities with the nearby primary schools (in particular with the kindergarten departments of these schools, serving children from 4- to 6-years of age). For the present purpose, to obtain a more equal distribution of the scores, based on median split, the scale was recoded into 0 (values up to 2.89; 'little to moderate contact') and 1 (2.90 to 5; 'much contact with schools').

Contact with neighborhood services indicated, according to the managers, whether centers did (scored 1) or did not (scored 0) have structural contact with one or more of five types of local organizations and services: primary schools, youth health care centers, family support and social work teams, municipal departments of welfare and education, and neighborhood welfare organizations (average of five dichotomous items; Cronbach's alpha = 0.583). The scale was recoded based on median split into 0 (values up to 0.40; 'little to moderate contact') and 1 (0.41 to 1.00; 'much contact with neighborhood services').

Structural classroom characteristics (teachers)

Teachers were interviewed by research assistants using a structured questionnaire addressing classroom characteristics, their own professional training, and the professional development activities provided to them. For the present purpose, the following structural quality variables were constructed (descriptive statistics are given in Table 3):

Group size was computed as the average number of children in the group during the busiest part (the middle of the morning) of the three busiest days of the week (i.e., Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday), as reported by the teachers.

Children-to-staff ratio was computed by dividing the maximum number of children in the group on regular days by the maximum number of licensed professionals present at the group on these days, thus not including student-teachers on an internship, household personnel, center managers or, occasionally, volunteering parents.

Teacher's education was defined as the highest level of completed formal pre-service education reported by the teachers and was measured on a scale representing the levels of the tracked Dutch secondary and tertiary education system, comprising both vocational and academic programs, ranging from 1 ('lower preparatory vocational education') to 8 ('university education').

Use of an education program reflected the use of a structured, officially accredited program of educational activities, originally developed for working with disadvantaged children but increasingly used for all children. For the present purpose, a dummy variable was created, indicating whether, according to the teachers, an education program was used with the values 0 ('no') and 1 ('yes'), without distinguishing between programs.

The Opportunities for professional development provided to the teachers at the center, as experienced by the teachers, was based on ten five-point scales, ranging from 1 ('never') to 5 ('every day') (Cronbach's alpha = 0.818), addressing, among others, opportunities for attending coursework, receiving personal coaching, and attending conferences for professionals.

Finally, Type of provision represented whether the classroom offered a full-day program, a half-day program, or combinations of both. For descriptive purposes only, a dummy variable was created with values 0 ('full-day program or a combination of full- and half-day programs') and 1 ('half-day program').

Group composition, children served (teachers)

Several group composition indicators were computed based on the number of children in the group with a particular family background or special educational needs profile, as indicated by the teacher, divided by the group size. Because of missing values (up to 35%) in teachers' reports on children's socioeconomic and migrant background, and children's language-support needs, multiple imputation (within SPSS 24) was applied for these variables. Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 4. Low socioeconomic status (SES) background is the teacher-reported proportion of children in the group from families with a low socioeconomic status according to the official criterion in Dutch education policy that both parents were not higher educated than at the preparatory vocational training level. Non-Dutch background, partly overlapping with low-SES background, is the teacher-reported proportion of children whose fathers and/or mothers were born in another country than the Netherlands. Language support needs represents the proportion of children who, according to the teachers, needed extra support in learning the Dutch language, partly overlapping with the indicators low-SES and non-Dutch migration background. Physical and intellectual impairment stands for the reported proportion of children with intellectual impairments: Down syndrome, physical handicaps, and/or chronical illness. Behavior problems indicate the proportion of children in the group with severe problems in the behavioral domain, as experienced by the teacher. Finally, Refugee background refers to the proportion of children from refugee families (mainly from Afghanistan and Syria) and asylum seekers, as reported by the teachers.

Care and inclusion in practice (teachers)

The inclusiveness of daily practice in the centers was assessed in several ways, based on teacher reports. The following variables were constructed (descriptive statistics are presented in Table 5).

Care for special needs was based on six three-point scales (Cronbach's alpha = 0.732), asking the teacher to rate to what extent measures were taken to accommodate children with special or additional needs and physical handicaps, such as adapting the play room, working with a special needs teacher, and asking support from external experts, with values 1 ('not'), 2 ('more or less') and 3 ('yes'). When teachers answered that particular measures were not applicable, no value was scored if, indeed, no children with special needs were present in the group; otherwise, 1 ('not') if such children were present.

Positive cultural diversity and inclusiveness practice was measured in the same way as with the managers, but now pertaining to the teacher and the group of children with whom the teacher was working on a daily basis. Four dichotomous items addressed how important it is in the view of the teacher to provide equal opportunities to all children (recoded into 0 'not important to important', 1 'very important'), whether the teacher allows children to use their heritage languages in the group (0 'no', 1 'yes'), if the teacher tries to communicate with non-Dutch parents in their own languages (0 'no', 1 'yes, as much as possible'), and if practices are adapted to particular religious or cultural preferences (0 'no', 1 'yes, as much as possible'). Cronbach's alpha of the scale was low, 0.418, yet we decided to keep the variable as a meaningful count of measures at the teacher and classroom level of positive adaptation to cultural diversity.

Stimulating inclusive group activities indicated teachers' beliefs on the importance of inclusive group activities and teachers' employment of strategies to manage these activities, and comprised three items with scores ranging from 1 ('never') to 7 ('always') (Cronbach's alpha = 0.750). An example item is: 'I offer activities for the group as a whole and make sure that all children can participate'.

Intercultural activities and celebrations was a scale based on three items (Cronbach's alpha = 0.513) asking teachers to rate on a seven-point scale how often they would involve children in activities to explore cultural and religious differences, stimulate collaborative play between children of mixed backgrounds, and celebrate important feasts and holy days of other cultural communities, with values ranging from 1 ('never') to 7 ('more than once a day').

The scale Language and literacy learning support comprised seven items (Cronbach's alpha = 0.719), asking teachers to rate on a seven-point scale how often they would create situations to involve children in activities that support children's language development and emergent literacy skills, with values ranging from 1 ('never') to 7 ('more than once a day'). Examples of items are: 'Children are engaged in picture book reading, telling stories based on the pictures' and 'Children participate in circle time conversations, sharing personal experiences'.

The scale Mathematics learning support included five items (Cronbach's alpha = 0.724), asking the teacher to rate on a similar seven-point scale how often they would create situations to engage children in activities that support their emergent numeracy and mathematical skills. Examples of items are: 'Children practice basic counting, play counting games, and name quantities (e.g., I have five marbles)' and 'Children are engaged in measuring activities using a ruler, weighing scales, or measuring cup'.

Process quality in practice (observers)

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System Toddler (CLASS Toddler; La Paro et al. 2011) was used to assess the classroom process quality. Observers were trained by licensed CLASS trainers and had to achieve at least 80% agreement within one scale-point deviation from the trainers in an online test before they were admitted to the study (average agreement was 89.5%; agreement by chance was 33.3%; Slot et al. 2018a, b, c). After passing the online test, the trainers conducted a live observation together with each observer prior to the data collection. Inter-observer agreement of the live observations within one scale-point deviation was 93.5% (Slot et al. 2018a; b, c). Each classroom was observed on one morning and all classrooms were observed within a 3-month period in the Spring of 2017 and 2018, respectively. Classroom processes and teachers' behaviors were observed during five 15 to 20 min cycles on the observation morning pertaining to situations of free play, structured (educational) activities, creative activities, and mealtime. Quality was rated across eight dimensions, covering two broader domains, and using a seven-point scale with values in three broad ranges: 1 or 2 (classroom is low on that aspect); 3, 4 or 5 (classroom is in the midrange); and 6 or 7 (classroom is high on that aspect). For the present purpose, domain scores for emotional support and educational support were calculated per classroom and averaged over situations. Emotional support is the average of the scores on five dimensions such as positive climate, reflecting the warmth, respect, and enjoyment displayed during interactions of the teachers and children; teacher sensitivity, indicating the extent to which the teachers are aware of and responsive to individual children's needs; and regard for child perspectives, representing the degree in which teachers' interactions with children match children's interests and support children's autonomy. Educational support is the average of the scores on three dimensions such as facilitation of learning and development, considering how well the teachers facilitate activities that support children's learning and development, and language modeling, referring to teachers' stimulation and modeling of children's use of language. Descriptive statistics of the domain scores are displayed in Table 5.

Analysis

The analyses proceeded in two steps. First, a k-means cluster analysis in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 24) was performed on the characteristics of the ECEC organizations as reported by the center managers. A related technique, Latent Class Analysis, was considered not feasible because of the required sample size (Gudicha et al. 2016). K-means cluster analysis is a descriptive non-statistical technique that groups cases on the basis of distances in a Euclidian space without the assumption of existing classes in the population and, therefore, applicable to small samples. A disadvantage of k-means cluster analysis is that statistical criteria to evaluate the cluster solution are lacking. K-means cluster analysis requires variables that are measured on different scales to be standardized or dichotomized. We chose for dichotomization as several variables were either already dichotomous or measured on polytomous ordinal or nominal scales. Weighing different criteria, a three-cluster solution was found most satisfactory, to be detailed further in the " Results " section. Cluster membership was determined for all 117 centers, then merged with the teacher and observation data.

Second, three multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) were conducted, each followed by univariate tests and pairwise comparisons, with cluster membership as the independent variable and, respectively, (1) the set of teacher-reported structural characteristics and indicators of professional development, (2) the indicators of group composition, and (3) the indicators of care and inclusion in practice, together with the observer-rated process quality, as the dependent variables. MANOVAs per set of characteristics were conducted as a first step to reduce the risk of chance findings with multiple testing. If the MANOVAs indicated a significant multivariate effect, we proceeded with univariate tests and pairwise comparisons. The univariate tests and pairwise comparisons further revealed which dependent variables and which contrasts between the organization types contributed most to the multivariate effect.

Although the data had a partially nested structure (teachers within groups; note that groups and centers were coinciding), multilevel analysis was not deemed feasible. Per group, data of only one or a few teachers were available (on average 1.45 per group), not meeting the within-group cluster size for multilevel analysis (Hox 2010). Teacher data were aggregated per group.

Results

Organization characteristics

Frequencies, means and standard deviations of the organization characteristics based on the managers' reports are presented in Table 1. The proportional scores after dichotomization are presented in Table 2, where the rightmost column represents the whole sample of centers.

Table 2 Organizational configurations of ECEC centers: mean proportions of centers within clusters meeting the included organizational characteristics (N = 117)

Most centers in the current sample were foundations (58.9%), sometimes foundations under a commercial holding (8.0%). A minority reported distributing profits to external shareholders (25%). Centers offered on average two different services, but some offered only one and others up to five. Presence of the manager at the centers indicated centralized line-management in about half of the centers (52.2%) and decentralized all-round management in the other half. The autonomy the managers experienced varied widely, between limited and high autonomy (observed scores on a five-point composite scale ranged from 2.00 to 5.00, SD = 0.74). The size of the centers, based on the number of employed licensed staff, also varied widely with a range of 1 to 60. Most staff employed at the centers were tenured, on average 75%, however with a wide observed range (between 0 and 100%). Centers also differed in flexibility regarding user contracts with parents (observed score range on a composite three-point scale: 1.00-3.00, SD = 0.70). Overall, managers indicated a moderate positive diversity climate, but both the range of scores and the large standard deviation point to big differences between centers (observed score range on a four-point composite scale: 0.00-4.00, SD = 1.29).

Opportunities for personal and team-based professionalization activities were, on average, provided to some extent with the mean value of personal professionalization indicating 'sometimes' and the mean value of team-based professionalization indicating meeting as a team 'once a month', but again with moderate to large variation (observed range on a three-point composite scale: 1.00-2.73, SD = 0.35, respectively, on a seven-point composite scale: 1.25-5.38, SD = 0.96). Centers, on average, tended to profile themselves as moderately service-oriented and as rather inclusive, but again with substantial variation across centers (observed score ranges on two composite five-point scales: 1.00-5.00, SD = 1.33, and 1.00-5.00, SD = 0.82, respectively). Variation was also present in the two indicators of centers' contacts with parents and the two indicators of centers' contacts with other local organizations. Contacts with parents through outreach activities was relatively rare (the mean proportion of outreach activities used, out of three possibilities, was 0.24; observed range: 0.00-1.00, SD = 0.24). Finally, almost all variables had missing values, amounting to 15% in one case. Missingness was due to the length of the questionnaire (more missing values towards the end of the questionnaire) and sometimes also due to the lack of precise knowledge on the part of the informant.

Descriptive statistics of the teacher-reported structural, group composition, care and inclusion in practice characteristics, and the observer-rated process quality are presented in Tables 3, 4 and 5 and will be briefly discussed in relation to the MANOVAs.

Configurations of organizational characteristics

To identify configurations, or types, of organizations, k-means cluster analysis in SPSS 24 was applied to the binary recoded organization characteristics as reported by managers, with the option of pairwise deletion in case of missing values. Cluster analysis does not provide overall goodness of fit, comparative fit or entropy measures to decide on a particular solution. It is recommended to compare a number of cluster solutions and to weigh parsimony and several other criteria to evaluate these solutions relative to each other. We examined solutions with two, three, four and five clusters. The two-clusters solution did not reproduce theoretically and policy-relevant distinctions regarding the number of services provided, the degree of manager autonomy, the share of tenured staff, the investment in systematic professional development and the provision of group-wise activities for parents (ANOVAs indicated no statistically significant effects of these characteristics on the cluster differentiation). The mean distance of centers to cluster centroids was 1.74 (SD = 0.34).

The three-clusters solution reproduced all relevant distinctions regarding organizations' structure, culture and alliances (all theoretically derived organization characteristics contributed statistical significance to the differentiation in clusters). Centers were reasonably evenly distributed over clusters, with the smallest cluster containing 35, the middle size cluster containing 38 and the largest 44 centers. The mean distance of centers to cluster centroids was 1.65 (SD = 0.35), smaller than found for the two-clusters solution.

The four-clusters solution, compared to the three-clusters solution, also reproduced all relevant distinctions, however less clearly interpretable from an organizational-sociological point of view as one cluster could not be clearly distinguished from the other three clusters on most indicators. Moreover, the distribution of centers over the cluster solution was slightly more unbalanced, with one cluster containing only 22 centers whereas the other three clusters contained 31, 32 and 33 centers, respectively. The mean distance of centers to cluster centroids was 1.61 (SD = 0.34), not much smaller than for the three-clusters solution.

Finally, the five-clusters solution resulted in a further distinction between small-size and large size for-profit organizations, resulting in two relatively small clusters (13 and 14 centers, respectively) compared to the other clusters. The mean distance of centers to cluster centroids was 1.57 (SD = 0.34), not much smaller than found for the three- and four-clusters solutions. Weighing parsimony, theoretical relevance, evenness of cluster sizes, mean cluster distances, and interpretability, we chose the three-clusters solution for the subsequent analyses.

Table 2 shows the clusters with the cluster structure parameters. Cluster 1 consists of centers that are mainly not-for-profit organizations characterized by low manager presence, which is indicative of hierarchical line-management and centralized administrative support (Van der Werf et al. 2019). A majority of the centers in this cluster are small-sized, have 80% or more of staff on tenured contracts, do not allow users much flexibility, and do not profile themselves as service-oriented nor as inclusive-emancipatory. In addition, the vast majority of centers in this cluster score low on the count of implemented measures to create an inclusive climate. Altogether, these structural characteristics predominantly match the ideal-type of the traditional professional-bureaucratic organization of the Mintzberg typology. Two aspects do not fit this type of organization, however. In the majority of centers, the managers reported to experience relatively high autonomy, while in contrast, implementation of systematic professionalization was not overly prominent and a team-orientation in professionalization activities was virtually absent, suggesting a change in this type of organization with regard to the prominence of professional performance as a central objective, as will be discussed later. Focusing on the predominant traditional professional-bureaucratic structure, we identified cluster 1 centers ( N = 38) as traditional not-for-profit professional-bureaucratic organizations.

Cluster 2 represents predominantly for-profit organizations, of which several report to distribute dividends to shareholders. The vast majority of centers have decentralized all-round management, with managers experiencing a relatively high degree of autonomy. Cluster 2 centers mostly offer multiple services in relatively large centers, while only a minority have 80% or more of staff on tenured contracts. The service-orientation is prominent, also in comparison to the other clusters. A majority of centers allow flexibility in the user contracts with parents and a vast majority emphasize providing service to parents as main focus of their external profile, but not inclusion-emancipation. Few centers report a high count of implemented positive diversity and inclusiveness measures. Few centers report to employ activities to reach out to (difficult-to-reach) parents. Likewise, only a minority of centers in this cluster report structural collaborative relationships with local schools and neighborhood services. Altogether, the characteristics of the centers in cluster 2 predominantly match Mintzberg's ideal-type of the market-driven for-profit division organization. Two aspects do not fit this ideal-type: a (small) majority of cluster 2 centers report to systematically provide staff with opportunities for professionalization and to focus on team-based professionalization. This may point to organizational hybridity, as will be discussed below. Focusing on the predominant pattern, we identified cluster 2 centers ( N = 44) as large, multifunctional, for-profit division organizations.

Cluster 3, like cluster 1, represents centers that are in majority not-for-profit foundations, but a number of centers in this cluster are commercial with a profit goal and the vast majority of centers in this cluster, like centers in cluster 2, offer multiple services to children and parents. Management in most cluster 3 centers is hierarchical in-line and managers in most centers report relatively little autonomy. Almost all centers are small sized, while the majority of centers have more than 80% of staff tenured. Most centers do not allow parents high contractual flexibility, although a substantial number of centers, more than in cluster 1, emphasize a service-to-parents orientation in their external profile. The majority of centers implement a policy of systematic staff professionalization and in most centers professionalization has a relatively strong team-orientation. Distinguishing features of cluster 3, compared to the other clusters, are that the (vast) majority of centers in cluster 3 report to implement several, above average positive diversity and inclusiveness measures, emphasize inclusion-emancipation in their external profile, maintain contact with parents through group meetings and outreach activities, while the vast majority of the centers of cluster 3 are also well-connected to local schools and neighborhood services. These characteristics altogether match the main coordination mechanisms of Mintzberg's ideal-type of the professional-bureaucratic organization as well as of the ideal-type of the missionary organization, while also aspects of the market-driven service orientation are present. Cluster 3 centers thus reflect more hybridity than the other types, especially compared to the traditional professional-bureaucratic organizations of cluster 1, to be discussed later. Considering these findings, we identified cluster 3 centers ( N = 35) as socially engaged mixed for-profit/not-for-profit professional organizations.

Finally, for descriptive purposes (not in Table 1), all clusters contain centers that provide only half-day programs (80% in cluster 1, 27% in cluster 2 and 63% in cluster 3), while all clusters contain centers that provide full-day programs or a combination of half- and full-day programs.

Structural characteristics by cluster

A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted with cluster membership as the independent variable and structural characteristics of the group and the center, as reported by the teachers, as the dependent variables. Means and standard deviations are reported in Table 3 and show an average group size of 13.90 (no large differences between clusters) and an average children-to-staff ratio of 6.31, with a smaller ratio in cluster 2 centers due to fact that part of these centers also cared for infants for whom the national quality framework prescribes smaller ratios. The multivariate effect of cluster on structural characteristics was statistically significant ( F(10, 172) = 3.041, p < 0.001, partial η ² = 0.150; Wilk's lambda). Univariate tests and pairwise comparisons revealed significant effects of cluster on the children-to-staff ratio ( F(2, 92) = 7.130, p < 0.001, partial η ² = 0.137; C1, C3 > C2) and the opportunities for professional development ( F(2, 92) = 4.975, p < 0.009, partial η ²  = 0.100; C3 > C1, C2). There were no significant differences between the clusters with regard to group size, teachers' training level and use of an education program.

Table 3 Teacher-reported structural characteristics by organizational configuration

Group composition by cluster

A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted with cluster membership as the independent variable and group composition characteristics as the dependent variables. Means and standard deviations are reported in Table 4 and show, for example, that in cluster 3 centers on average 42.5% of the children cared for have a low-SES background compared to 23.1% in cluster 2 centers. This partly overlaps with findings that on average 40.9% of the children in cluster 3 centers have additional language-support needs compared to 18.3% in cluster 2 centers. The multivariate effect of cluster on group composition characteristics was statistically significant ( F(12, 166) = 2.998, p < 0.009, partial η ² = 0.143; Wilks' Lambda). Univariate tests and pairwise comparisons revealed strong significant effects of cluster on the percentages of children with a low-SES background ( F(2, 90) = 4.806, p < 0.010, partial η ² = 0.098; C3 > C2) and language-support needs ( F(2, 90) = 8.832, p < 0.000, partial η ² = 0.167; C3 > C1, C2), and a borderline significant effect at p < 0.100 for children with a refugee background ( F(2, 90) = 3.038, p < 0.053, partial η ²  = 0.065; C3 > C1, C2). The other univariate tests were not significant, however pairwise comparisons showed a borderline significant higher proportion of non-Dutch children in cluster 3 compared to cluster 1 and cluster 2 centers.

Table 4 Teacher-reported group composition characteristics (partly overlapping) by organizational configuration

Inclusion, education and care in practice

Descriptive statistics on inclusion, education and care in practice are presented in Table 5. They show large differences in the reported average positive diversity climate between cluster 3 and cluster 1 centers (mean scores are 3.92 vs. 2.57, pooled SD = 1.54). They also show high observed emotional process quality, with a mean score of 5.69 in the whole sample, well beyond the conventional benchmark of 5 ('good'; La Paro et al. 2011), but higher in cluster 3 centers than in the other centers. The observed educational process quality is above the benchmark of 3 ('just sufficient'), as is usually found in studies in several countries using the CLASS (Slot 2018a), but with large differences between the clusters (e.g., cluster 3: 3.67 vs. cluster 2: 3.00, pooled SD = 0.45).

A MANOVA was conducted with cluster as independent and the teacher-reported inclusive practices and observer-rated process quality as dependent variables. Because of the relatively large number of missing values, which would severely reduce the statistical power of the multivariate analysis, the variable Care for special needs was not included in the MANOVA but separately tested. The multivariate effect was statistically significant ( F(14, 158) = 2.960, p < 0.000, partial η ² = 0.208; Wilks' Lambda). Univariate tests and pairwise comparisons showed medium-strong to strong effects of cluster on cultural inclusiveness in practice ( F(2, 87) = 8.352, p < 0.000, partial η ² = 0.164; C3 > C1, C2), mathematics learning support ( F(2, 87) = 3.364, p < 0.039, partial η ² = 0.073; C3 > C1), observed emotional process quality ( F(2, 87) = 3.771, p < 0.027, partial η ² = 0.082; C3 > C1) and observed educational process quality ( F(2, 87) = 5.695, p < 0.005, partial η ² = 0.118; C3 > C2; C1 > C2). The cluster effect on care for special needs was separately tested with a univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA), yielding a statistically significant medium-sized effect ( F(2, 80) = 3.151, p < 0.048, partial η ²  = 0.073; C3 > C2).

Table 5 Teacher-reported group composition characteristics (partly overlapping) by organizational configuration

No statistically significant effects of cluster were found on teachers' inclusive group attitudes and the intercultural activities provided. Note that the standardized differences between the means of the highest and lowest scoring cluster on these variables (as can be inferred from Table 5) are medium-sized, favoring cluster 3. We also did not find a significant effect of cluster on the language and literacy support activities provided to children, but the trend of the means disfavors cluster 1 centers.

Discussion

The present study examined how organizations providing early childhood education and care in the Netherlands have adapted to the divergent demands and incentives of the Dutch hybrid ECEC system within the wider context of increasing cultural diversification and social inequality. The study, using data collected in 2017 and 2018, was partly set up as a replication of a previous study using data from 2012 (Van der Werf et al. 2020), but addressed more specifically organizations' diversity and inclusiveness policy.

Organizational differentiation

Regarding the first research question, whether different types of organizations could be identified in the Dutch hybrid ECEC system, cluster analysis of organizational characteristics derived from the framework of Mintzberg ( 1983) revealed three distinct types, that were named, respectively, traditional not-for-profit professional-bureaucratic organizations, large multifunctional for-profit division organizations, and socially engaged mixed for-profit/not-for-profit professional organizations. These types matched the ideal-typical configurations proposed by Mintzberg rather closely, but also showed organizational hybridity. Particularly the type socially engaged mixed for-profit/not-for-profit professional organizations combined elements of professional bureaucracies (emphasis on hierarchical line-management, standards and systematic professionalization), commercial division organizations (client-centeredness to some extent, offering multiple services to parents) and missionary organizations (commitment to social-emancipatory and inclusiveness goals). Also the type of large multifunctional for-profit division organizations was hybrid to some extent, especially by integrating elements of the professional-bureaucratic organization type (emphasis on team-based professional development), whereas the traditional professional-bureaucratic organizations seemed to have lost some of the typical characteristics of this type of organization (hierarchical line-management, team-orientation). The latter may reflect changes in adaptation strategy of this type of ECEC organizations, which emerged from the former public municipality-run ECEC system. Particularly the ongoing take-overs of these former public organizations by large commercial companies due to government withdrawal, could be the cause that their original focus on professional quality and public interests has decreased, while remaining a non-profit legal entity (e.g., a foundation) within a commercial holding (Brancheorganisatie Kinderopvang 2015; Kruiter et al. 2019). Remarkable was the apparent lack of social engagement and orientation on the values of inclusion and equity of centers of this type, compared to the socially engaged mixed for-profit/not-for-profit professional organizations. Most of the latter type of ECEC organizations also emerged from the former public system but seemed to have strengthened their orientation on public interests. Note that some of the socially engaged organizations (21%) were commercial.

The current findings for the years 2017 and 2018 were largely similar to the findings for the year 2012, reported in our previous study (Van der Werf et al. 2020). The three types of ECEC organizations found in the present study matched closely three of the four types found earlier and our characterizations of the matching types are highly similar, although the set of characteristics to identify the organization types and their operational definitions in both studies differed at some points. The fourth type found in the previous study, namely the small-scale simple structure for-profit firms, could not be replicated in the current study. A likely explanation is that this type of organization was infrequent in the current sample due to a decreased market share over the past years as a consequence of scale enlargement in the Dutch ECEC sector and take-overs by large commercial companies (Brancheorganisatie Kinderopvang 2015; Kruiter et al. 2019).

In our previous study we concluded that commercial objectives, together with client-centeredness and flexibility, on the one hand, and missionary social engagement, together with outreach to parents, on the other hand, were the organizational characteristics that distinguished most between organizations. The present results confirm these findings and add a further distinguishing characteristic, namely the embeddedness of ECEC organizations in networks with other local services (based on indicators not available in the data of 2012), reflecting the collaboration within local networks to tackle the complex problems in the local context (Bryson et al. 2014; Provan and Kenis 2008; Quinn et al. 1988). Centers of the socially engaged mixed for-profit/not-for-profit professional type were more strongly connected to local schools and neighborhood child-, family- and social services than centers of the other two types.

Differences in inclusion and quality

Regarding the second research question, whether the identified types of organizations differed with regard to the inclusiveness and quality provided, we found partial confirmation of our hypotheses. As expected, ECEC centers within the three types did not differ on basic structural quality characteristics, although the children-to-staff ratio was more favorable in the large multifunctional for-profit centers, due to the fact that several of these centers also cared for infants, obliging them to lower the ratio in line with the national quality framework. Although there were differences in the use of an education program, in all types, the majority of centers reported to use such a program and the differences between the types were not significant. An important difference, however, concerned the implementation of a policy of systematic professionalization as experienced by the teachers, which was higher in the socially engaged professional organizations compared to the other types of organizations.

With respect to the inclusiveness and quality of the centers, a major difference was found regarding the social background and profile of needs of the children cared for. Socially engaged professional organizations, overall, served (partly overlapping) far more children of low-SES background, more non-Dutch children, far more children with language-support needs, and more children with a refugee background than centers of the other types, with no clear differences in this regard between traditional professional-bureaucratic organizations, on the one hand, and large commercial organizations, on the other hand. Thus, socially engaged professional organizations were, on average, more inclusive in terms of serving diverse and disadvantaged children than the other types of organizations.

Regarding the inclusiveness and quality of care and education practices, most though not all indicators also revealed the expected differences between the types of organizations. Overall, based on teacher reports, socially engaged professional organizations were more attuned to children with special and additional needs, provided a culturally more inclusive climate to children and parents, for instance by allowing the use of heritage languages at the center (officially not allowed in Dutch ECEC), provided more intercultural activities, were more focused on inclusive group activities (a trending pattern, but statistically not significant), and supported children more in early mathematics learning as a way to prepare them for school. For support to language and literacy learning the differences were smaller and not significant. Finally, the observed emotional and educational process quality, based on the CLASS Toddler (La Paro et al. 2011), differed strongly between the types as well, showing significantly higher quality of the care and education processes in centers of the socially engaged professional type than in centers of the other types. In short, although not completely consistent, we found that the socially engaged professional organizations provided more inclusive and high-quality education and care than the other organizations.

Value-based regulation

Hybridity: challenges and opportunities

The public tasks of providing equal opportunities to all children and supporting the integration in society of children from different ethnic, cultural or linguistic communities are of increasing importance in current societies and ECEC can contribute crucially to these tasks, as is recognized in many countries (European Commission 2018; OECD 2015; Vandenbroeck 2017). System hybridity, as a consequence of privatization with maintenance of public tasks, can be an obstacle to serve these public tasks (Ball 2009; Knijn and Lewis 2017), but may also offer opportunities, especially with regard to more fairly redistributing collective wealth to disadvantaged communities (Van Lancker and Van Mechelen 2015). The present study, as did our previous one, shows that not all types of ECEC organizations are equally capable or motivated to fulfill these public tasks. Depending on the configuration of internal professionalization, shared mission among staff and leadership, outreach to disadvantaged groups, and embeddedness in networks with other local services, some organizations are better capable to serve these public tasks than others, and, as such, they are essential for a fair redistribution of society's collective wealth to those who need it most to compensate for socioeconomic and cultural inequality. The present findings, as did the findings of our previous study, also suggest that national quality regulation frameworks may not be the strongest tools of society to assure quality, equality, compensation for disadvantages, and inclusiveness (see also Sylva et al. 2015). This approach to governing the ECEC system fails to recognize the dynamisms at the level of the ECEC organizations (Bryson et al. 2014; Moore 2014; Nutt 2002; Skelcher and Smith 2015).

The present study relates to the timely questions whether ECEC should be a universal public service with strong state involvement, mainly provided by not-for-profit organizations (Cascio 2017; Lloyd 2020; Penn 2011; Ünver et al. 2018) or, as a farther reaching step, whether ECEC should be integrated in the national public education system (Kaga et al. 2010). There are no simple answers. Advocates of a largely public ECEC system with strong state involvement often point to the predominantly public, unitary systems of the Nordic countries in Europe, with high uptake from an early age and allegedly high quality (Ünver et al. 2018; Lloyd 2020; Naumann 2011; Pavolini and Van Lancker 2018; Penn 2011). However, recent studies in Denmark and Norway, involving large representative samples of ECEC centers, do not show an overall advantage in quality nor equal access to high quality, instead revealing in particular low educational process quality (Baustad and Bjørnestad 2020; Bjørnestad and Os 2018; Bleses et al. 2018; Sibley et al. 2015; Slot et al. 2015a; for an overview and extended discussion, see Leseman and Slot 2020). In contrast, the present findings may suggest that introducing rivaling logics in a privatized and marketized ECEC system (commercial aims and client-centeredness, but also a child's rights-based developmental perspective and incentives for social equity) can drive the system as a whole depending on a deliberate mix of incentives, via organizational differentiation, to become more adaptive to the divergent needs and demands of children and parents, more outreaching to disadvantaged communities, more inclusive, and better capable of distributing the highest quality to those who need this most.

There is a clear need for future studies in other countries with both similar (privatized and marketized) and different (largely public) ECEC systems to corroborate the current findings, focusing on the level of ECEC organizations. If findings would converge, they may inform new public governance beyond the binary state versus market models of governance (Ball 2009; Bryson et al. 2014; Provan and Kenis 2008).

Limitations

Several limitations to the present study should be mentioned. First of all, the sample of ECEC centers for 0- to 4-year-olds was small, and due to non-response and missing values the statistical power of the main analyses was decreased. The moderate positive response rates (on average 42.0% over the years 2017 and 2018) may have caused a bias in the data. Stable, well managed larger organizations may have been overrepresented in the current sample, while small firms and organizations in transition or less well managed were possibly underrepresented. Nonetheless, there was relevant variation in organization characteristics, which were interpretably associated with the indicators of quality and inclusiveness. Note also that the findings of our previous study on the hybrid Dutch ECEC system, based on data from the year 2012 with a positive response rate of 52.6% (Van der Werf et al. 2020), could be largely replicated in the current study, which increases the confidence in the present results. Second, the operational definition and measurement of core constructs regarding inclusiveness was limited to only rough indicators due to data availability, while our observational measures based on the CLASS Toddler (La Paro et al. 2011) did not specifically address key aspects of intercultural and multilingual pedagogy in the classroom, such as valuing multiple differences, the integration of intercultural contents in play-work activities, the fostering of critical thinking, and the bridging between children's languages and the majority language (Banks 2015; Cummins 2015). Nonetheless, we believe that the current findings are relevant to the issue of equity and cultural inclusiveness in ECEC as they show a clear differentiation in this regard between different types of ECEC centers operating in a hybrid market.

Conclusion

Despite these limitations, the present study shows that the hybrid ECEC system of the Netherlands with a mix of commercial and public demands and incentives, is associated with organizational differentiation. The study reveals clear differences between organizations in the inclusiveness and quality of education and care provided to young diverse children, in spite of successive harmonization reforms and the presence of a single, uniform statutory quality framework. System hybridity, as described for the Dutch case, presents challenges but also opportunities. Opportunities are exemplified in particular by the former public, municipality-run organizations who have become more entrepreneurial and client-centered, while also effectively reaching out to disadvantaged communities and providing children in these communities with high-quality inclusive education and care. Facilitating these organizations in a hybrid system can contribute to a more fair redistribution of society's collective wealth. Challenges relate to both the formerly public not-for-profit professional-bureaucratic and the large multifunctional commercial ECEC organizations who do not seem to provide the desired high quality nor inclusive context.

Availability of data and materials

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.

Abbreviations

ANOVA:

Analysis of variance

CLASS:

Classroom Assessment Scoring System

ECEC:

Early childhood education and care

MANOVA:

Multivariate analysis of variance

SES:

Socioeconomic status

SPSS:

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

Funding

The research reported in this article used data of the Dutch national daycare quality monitor, commissioned by of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, but did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Affiliations

1. Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands

W. M. van der Werf, P. L. Slot & P. P. M. Leseman

2. Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB, Tilburg, The Netherlands

P. N. Kenis

Contributions

WW: conceptualization, writing-original draft, formal analysis. PS: investigation, resources, writing-review and editing, supervision. PK: conceptualization, writing-review and editing, supervision. PL: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, resources, writing-review and editing, supervision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to W. M. van der Werf.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Inclusive practice and quality of education and care in the Dutch hybrid early childhood education and care system - International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy

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The present study examined how in the context of the hybrid, privatized and marketized Dutch early education and care system (ECEC), childcare organizations respond to the public task of supporting inclusion and equity in an increasingly diverse society.

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The issue of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) has become a matter of significant concern in many countries in recent years (OECD, 2006). Within those countries with a well-developed, or developing, ECEC system, the past decade has witnessed a range of reviews, public policy, inquiries and research into what should constitute quality in ECEC (OECD, 2006). Typical of this phenomenon is Australia. Over the past decade and a half Australia has witnessed the rapid growth of ECEC provision (Elliot, 2006), but with a change in Commonwealth Government after the election in late 2007 a commitment was made to a higher-level of national quality across all types of ECEC services (Australian Government, 2008).

From many subsequent policy developments a key initiative for improving the quality of ECEC provision is the Council of Australian Government: COAG ( 2009) initiated National Quality Standard (NQS), implemented progressively from July 2010 across all Long Day Care (LDC) centres, Family Day Care (FDC) centres, Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) and preschools from 1 st January 2012. The new NQS addresses standardised minimum staff-to-child ratios, workforce qualifications and includes a rating system that ranks ECEC services according to their quality. Under a more transparent system agenda, the results of ratings are to be publicly available.

Before this initiative in ECEC policy is considered, it is essential to address the issues associated with quality in early childhood education and care. What constructs make up and define quality in programs? Once this is established how do we measure quality in a program and at a systemic level? How is high quality in a program delineated? What is the link between quality indicators and child outcomes? These questions are significant as they address fundamental policy issues in ECEC and the consequential impact of those policies on parents, children and the ECEC sector.

What is quality ECEC?

Quality in ECEC is an elusive concept, much discussed and debated in research papers over time, yet without agreement (Burchinal & Cryer, 2003; Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999; Fleer & Kennedy, 2006; Ishimine, 2009; Mooney et al., 2003; Moss, 1994; NICHID Early Child Care Research Network, 2002; Raban, 2000; Sylva, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart, 2003). Sylva et al. ( 2003), for example, argue that "quality is not a universal concept but depends on national curricula and cultural priorities" (p.46) and therefore is contextually dependent. Similarly, Mooney et al. ( 2003) contend that "definitional issues and differences in government structures, welfare systems, policies and practices make it difficult to compare the quality of provision cross-nationally" (p.5). In addition, Dahlberg et al., ( 1999) "understood quality to be a subjective, value-based, relative and dynamic concept, with the possibility of multiple perspectives or understandings of what quality is" (p.5). In summary, these researchers argue that there is no globally accepted definition of quality in ECEC, though a degree of consensus does exist and there have subsequently been advances in the publication of global standards for early childhood learning and development (Britto & Kagan, 2010, Scott-Little, 2010)

Process quality, however, focuses on the nature of interactions between the child and teacher, child and child, teacher and parent, teacher and teacher, as well as the nature of centre leadership and teacher pedagogical skills. Process components influence the everyday nature of ECEC settings and they directly influence the quality of a child's day-to-day experience. Such components are more constructive in nature and require more in-depth observations than structural quality.

In a major study of ECEC, the OECD ( 2006) identified seven aspects of quality - (1) interaction or process quality, (2) child-outcome quality, (3) standards pertaining to parent/community outreach and involvement, (4) orientation quality, (5) structural quality, (6) educational concept and practice and (7) operational quality - these can be reconfigured within the two types of quality. Broadly from (1) to (3) are process quality, while from (4) to (7) are categorised as structural quality.

In thinking toward measurement of quality there is a dilemma, however, as the elements of ECEC curricula cannot be classified easily by type or it may be argued, are related to both structure and process. In part this is because the curriculum in ECEC contexts is vaguely defined, compared with school sectors, in part because of its nature. The curriculum, defined as the planned learning opportunities for children, reaches across the two types of quality, like an umbrella. Both structural and process aspects are influenced by what teachers/staff plan and how they enact the curriculum in the moment. Our model (see Figure 1) shows the relationships between curriculum and the two types of quality in an ECEC context. The two types of quality and curriculum influence each other and are essential elements to construct overall quality in ECEC settings. Structural components, such as staff: child ratios, group size, staff qualifications, physical resources all influence the way the curriculum may be conceptualised and applied in ECEC settings. Process quality and curriculum are interdependent as seen in the case of pedagogy which is essential to curriculum yet also powerfully affects process quality. A change in pedagogy within the curriculum (e.g. a new method for managing behaviour, giving feedback or teaching reading) will affect the process quality of a centre. Similarly the pedagogical approach of a centre (e.g. more free-play oriented, more academic skills focused) will influence how the curriculum is conceptualised.

Model of relationship between curriculum and quality

Internationally, the NICHID Early Child Care Research Network ( 2002) found that process quality had a direct impact on child outcomes, whereas structural indicators of quality had an indirect impact through process quality. Our model emphasises this finding, indicating that structural quality enhances process quality, which then directly influences overall quality. Structural components also have an indirect impact on child outcomes by providing the basis for an enhanced learning environment. For example, smaller group sizes and more qualified staff should improve the quality of the learning environment and thereby child outcomes. From this model, curriculum influences the overall quality significantly. Yet, it has long been undervalued and underestimated in ECEC contexts.

Why measure quality?

There are several significant reasons for measuring quality in ECEC settings. The first is to ensure that ECEC provision meets and maintains national standards for children and their families. In Australia, QIAS created threshold standards so that measuring quality determines if these thresholds are maintained.

QIAS information about individual LDC centres are presented on the NCAC website so that parents can access information to inform their choice of LDC centre. However, the OECD ( 2006) argued that in Australia a large number of parents were not utilizing the web information effectively, largely because either parents did not have enough knowledge about NCAC or they had insufficient time for actively pursuing the NCAC data (OECD, 2006). Paradoxically, the QIAS information is brief and was designed to support parental understanding of LDC centres that their children attend.

A third reason is to engage and ensure that LDC centres consistently address issues of quality improvement. In most cases this is linked with staff on-going professional development. However, there is a flaw as the self-report process does not provide enough critical feedback. In addition, a clear definition of quality is needed to provide a useful idea of what quality means and the basis for a professional development program. This should be research-based rather than ideologically argued.

Fourth, quality should be measured in ECEC settings as a means to provide recognition and acknowledgement for the work of centres and teachers who provide an improved education and care. The idea of incentives is significant to quality as it can be an effective way to improve outcomes as well as recognize and acknowledge greater effort. An incentive can be either intrinsic (interest and enjoyment of the work) or extrinsic (financial reward), or both. However, the effect of incentives on public policy is complex and Le Grand ( 2003) has argued that there might be different effects of the financial reward and public service between above and below thresholds.

Quality policy in Australian ECEC

In the 1980s centre-based childcare became an increasingly significant public issue as women increasingly participated in the workforce to both seek financial independence and to pursue professional and job equality. Moreover, Wangmann ( 1995) viewed this significant shift as freeing women from traditional social pressures, where centre-based childcare was not seen as a withdrawal of mother's responsibility. Since then, non-parental home-based and centre-based childcare has become more accepted and regarded in Australian society. At the same time, the Australian government accepted responsibility to develop policy addressing the provision of non-parental childcare. By the late 1980's, childcare policy in terms of licensing and regulation was established in the state/territory governments independent from the Commonwealth government. For example, in 1989, the New South Wales government released centre-based childcare regulations. However, state/territory governments lacked the resources to build strong policy. This produced an unintended consequence evident in the current inconsistent regulatory system across Australia and has raised serious problems at the national ECEC policy in recent years.

The policy development period of the 1980s was primarily associated with social and economic objectives for childcare provision rather than on enhancing positive child developmental outcomes. The Commonwealth government viewed centre-based childcare as part of national economic growth and stimulation (Wangmann, 1995), because flexible and affordable centre-based childcare enabled parents to participate in employment opportunity and to contribute to overall national economic growth. However, the 'quality' of childcare provision became a central attention for working parents and attracted societal and political interests. In 1993, the Commonwealth government linked its financial commitment to children's services to a quality assurance system called the Quality Improvement and Accreditation System (QIAS) for LDC centres to improve the quality of provision in Australia.

While the QIAS was originally introduced with the aim of improving quality standards for long day care centres, it expanded its reach to family day care and outside school hours care services and was, as well, an administrative pathway for subsidising parental childcare costs through the financial incentive of the Child Care Benefit. In this way the QIAS became a powerful tool for demonstrating quality status without reviewing what quality actually meant in an Australian context. Consequently, the tension between 'threshold' quality (i.e., state licensing) and an 'improvement'agenda has remained.

Measuring ECEC quality in Australia

Quality may be measured in many ways, but commonly a threshold approach is employed which maintains a minimum national standard, based on legislation and linked to licensing criteria. In Australia, the national quality accreditation system, called the Quality Improvement and Accreditation System (QIAS) for long day care centres, conducted by the National Childcare Accreditation Council (NCAC), has contributed nationally to raising quality standards by requiring minimum entry standards. Although the QIAS does not provide a clear definition of quality, there are seven areas to measure before approval is given: (1) staff relationship with children and peers, (2) partnerships with families, (3) programming and evaluation, (4) children's experiences and learning, (5) protective care and safety, (6) health, nutrition and wellbeing and (7) administration procedures to support quality (NCAC, 2006). In a self-report process, centres must address all seven areas in order to achieve accreditation through QIAS. This has had the effect of improving the quality of long day care centres as participation in this process has achieved an accreditation rate of 92% (NCAC, 2009).

In the early 1990s, due to the rapidly increasing demand for ECEC sectors in Australia, particularly long day care centres, more attention was paid to the quality of these services (OECD, 2001). Introduced in 1993 nationally, the QIAS was adopted with the system acknowledged as an indicator of quality for Long Day Care (LDC) centres in Australia. Importantly participation in the Quality Improvement and Accreditation System (QIAS) is required for centres to access funds from the Child Care Benefit (CCB) scheme that financially supports parents, enabling more affordable care. This process has been a powerful incentive for LDC centres to participate. Non-accreditation denies parents access the Child Care Benefit scheme. Consequently, this system became increasingly important in maintaining minimal national standards of quality and is often used as a measure by parents to choose a long day care centre for their children.

There are, however, many fundamental flaws with the QIAS and its application. A key concern is that the definition of quality is vague thereby providing a weak base for the seven identified areas of quality. The curriculum is also undervalued and essentially not assessed. Third, the system needs a stronger research base in order to function as a valid and reliable indicator of quality (Elliott, 2004; Ishimine et al., 2009). Further, a reliance on self-reported items in the accreditation process raises questions about the veracity of centre quality. Finally, even though a long day care centre may receive a high score (percentage) from QIAS, it does not necessarily translate to high quality, compared with other measures. The QIAS is designed for a threshold approach and 'scores' beyond the threshold are essentially meaningless.

However, recently the COAG ( 2009) announced that, between 1 st July 2010 and 31 st December 2011, a new quality assessment process and quality ratings is being trialled jointly by the NCAC and state and territory regulatory agencies. A new assessment process is in place in trial form from July 2010 as precursor to a new national rating system for LDC centres. What is unknown is how the process will change from the QIAS process, what the responsibilities are of the national body for authorising the new Quality Standard System, and how the assessment process will operate. Such systemic change poses a critical transition time for ECEC field. To enhance child outcomes such change needs to be built on research knowledge over politically driven decision-making.

Is QIAS an appropriate measure for a quality in Australia?

For many the existing Australian national quality assurance measurement - Quality Improvement and Accreditation System (QIAS) - is highly problematic (Rush, 2006; Fenech, Sumsion, & Goodfellow, 2008; Ishimine, et al., 2009). Why is QIAS unsuitable as a measure of quality in ECEC? The evidence indicates four key reasons. First, the QIAS uses several ambiguous terms in the indicators upon which judgements are made (e.g., 'many', 'most', & 'appropriately'). What do these terms mean? These words can be interpreted quite differently by individuals, potentially producing low inter-rater reliability (Ishimine et al., 2009) and problematic assessments of 'quality'.

Second, within the seven quality areas identified in QIAS, five quality areas rely on staff self-report. Although the QIAS validation process is conducted through an observation by independent trained validators, some of the indicators are not directly observable. They require information from staff to form an assessment, the data being self-report by staff. However, self-reports can be unreliable, even invalid, and consequently cause biased results as staff, for example are likely to answer in favour of the centre.

Third, substantial United States research (Early et al., 2007; Mashburn et al., 2008) confirms the importance of process quality as having greater impact than structural quality on children's overall development. However, in the QIAS only two quality areas (i.e., staff relationships with children and peers & children's experiences and learning) out of seven are focused on actual day-to-day experiences between teachers and children. Yet the quality areas are weighted equally, so proportionally, the QIAS provides significantly less emphasis on process quality than structural quality. Furthermore, with QIAS there are insufficient mechanisms for assessing the quality of pedagogy, so process quality is further diminished.

Finally, the QIAS does not report inter-rater reliability information. According to the NCAC ( 2006), validators are trained, however, without reporting inter-rater reliability data, rendering the QIAS unable to verify that instruments are used reliably. Further, results are reported only at the centre-level. This does not indicate whether variation between rooms within individual centres poses problems in relation to the overall statements about the quality of a centre.

New policy directions for Australia: A national ECEC strategy

Although education and childcare are constitutional domains of the states, the Australian Government has made a major commitment to implementing new initiatives for improving the life opportunities of all Australian children (DEEWR 2009c). A focus of this commitment is improving quality in the ECEC sector, as well as access and affordability of ECEC for all children in Australia. Key agendas for these initiatives include access to quality early childhood education for all children, lifting quality in ECEC, closing the gap for indigenous children, helping Australians balance work and family commitments, improving affordability of child care, improving child and family health, supporting vulnerable children and helping children with disabilities (DEEWR, 2009c).

A proposed quality rating system in Australia

As identified above the existing QIAS has demonstrated substantial limitations, particularly related to effective rating of quality dimensions. A key component of a new National Quality System in ECEC is an effective quality rating system (QRS). For DEEWR ( 2009d), its primary goal is "to provide useful information to families enabling them to assess the quality of their child care service and make informed choices when selecting an early childhood education and care service for their child or children" (2009d). In a discussion paper DEEWR ( 2008) identified three goals for a quality rating system - indication of service quality, encouragement of continuous improvement and information for families and the community. The proposed design is a five level rating system - Unsatisfactory, Operating requirements, National quality standard, High quality and Excellent (2009f). In the policy overview document DEEWR ( 2009f) argued "it is proposed that services will receive an overall rating and one of five possible ratings for each of the seven quality areas, which would give them a quality profile" (p. 4). In addition, DEEWR ( 2009e) clarified that it is proposed that "each level will be defined by a set of criteria, including quantitative and qualitative assessment by an external assessor on key areas" (p. 29). At this stage, the quality rating system is in the developmental phase with piloting on draft documents continuing.

Although a neophyte system, there are overriding issues that typically challenge efforts toward significant change. For example, the intended labelling system could produce unintended consequences with negative impacts for families and centres. The cost of childcare is thought to be continually problematic for Australian families. If the new rating system produces highly rated ECEC centres, these may increase their fees to 'maintain' that quality. Further, the new rating system is not clearly articulated around a strong theoretical framework in combination with a research base. COAG ( 2009) announced that the new quality assessment process is to be based on seven quality areas: (1) Educational program and practice, (2) Children's health and safety, (3) Physical environment, (4) Staffing arrangement, (5) Relationships with children, (6) Collaborative partnerships with families and communities, (7) Leadership and service management. However, the theoretical constructs that underpin these areas to support child outcomes are not clear; hence there is risk of sustaining a "politically driven threshold approach" rather than moving to a stronger research constructed approach. For example, as process quality directly influences child outcomes it needs greater weight in an assessment tool. The observation process of quality judgement is as yet unclear. In addition, the curriculum framework relates loosely to the quality areas poorly representing links between quality indicators. For example, the Early Years Learning Framework does not indicate the relationship between what the curriculum should offer and indicators of quality. Furthermore, there are other potential problems which are not articulated, including the public consultation process, as well as the level of reliability and validity of the measures. If the problems of QIAS are not addressed and if a similar approach is utilized within a new system, the quality rating system will produce unreliable ratings. The issue of effective measurement is central to the proposed quality rating system.

Measures of quality

How could quality be measured in ECEC? There is a well-established and recognized measurement tool in the United States designed to assesses ECEC quality. In 1980, in North Carolina Harms and Clifford ( 1980) published the first form of the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale: ECERS to assess seven aspects of the ECEC environment. ECERS is known as a comprehensive measure of quality addressing seven factors - (1) space and furnishings, (2) personal care routine, (3) language reasoning, (4) activities, (5) interaction, (6) program structure, and (7) parents and staff. The ECERS has been used in many studies internationally to measure ECEC quality including Singapore (Kwan, Sylva, & Reeves, 1998), Sweden (Andersson, 1999; Sheridan & Samuelsson, 2001); the US (e.g., Burchinal & Cryer, 2003; Cassidy, Hestenes, Hegde, Hestenes, & Mims, 2005; Montes, Hightower, Brugger, & Moustafa, 2005; NICHID Early Child Care Research Network, 2002), England (Sylva et al., 2004), Canada (Goelman et al., 2006), Germany (Kuger & Rossbach, 2007) and Australia (Ishimine, 2009). Meanwhile, ECERS has been revised and published as an updated version: the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition: ECERS-R (Harms, Cllifford, & Cryer, 2005). Consequently ECERS and ECERS-R are established measures of quality - mostly, but not exclusively in English-speaking countries - applicable in a wide range of ECEC contexts (e.g., centre-based childcare, pre-schools & playgroup) for classrooms with children who are from two and half years to five years old.

ECEC quality has received much attention as international researchers show greater interest in the effects of ECEC quality on children's developmental outcomes. A result of this increased attention has given ECERS, and subsequently ECERS-R, the reputation as a valuable measure of overall quality and has become a reference criterion for measuring the quality of early childhood services in the U.S. First introduced in 1999 in the state of Colorado, some 18 states currently use a form of QRS (quality rating system) at a state-wide level (NCCIC, 2009). Alternatively some communities have implemented a QRS at a local level, such as Palm Beach County in Florida and Los Angeles County in California (Mitchell, 2005). In almost all states (except Montana & Vermont) there is some use of environmental scales including ECERS-R.

An evaluation study, conducted and reported by RAND (Zellman, Perlman, Le, & Setodji, 2008), examined 65 childcare centres to assess their quality using ECERS-R. A key finding was the poor relationship between star ratings and measures of staff-child interaction, meaning that the star rating approach did not reflect process quality effectively. Moreover, there were no relationships between star ratings and child outcomes (Zellman et al, 2008). These findings raise the question of what kind of quality rating reform is necessary to the design and validation process. Importantly how might definitions of quality be reconstructed in light of research findings?

Answers to these questions may also be found in other forms of quality assessment. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) has published a measure that assesses classroom quality in ECEC settings (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008). It consists of three domains - Emotional support, Classroom organization and Instructional support. Under these domains, there are 11 dimensions (1), positive climate, (2) negative climate, (3) teacher sensitivity, (4) regard for student perspectives, (5) behaviour management, (6) productivity, (7) instructional learning formats, (8) concept development, (9) quality feedback, (10) language modelling, and (11) literacy focus. The CLASS primarily focuses on teacher-child interaction using these eleven teaching angles to capture process quality comprehensively. There is little emphasis on structural quality and curriculum focus, however this is one of a few measures where process quality is captured sufficiently and systematically.

In the late 80's, Arnett ( 1989) released the Caregiver Interaction Scale (CLS) to assess a global rating of caregiver/teacher sensitivity and responsiveness in ECEC settings and home environment. The measure focuses on caregiver/teacher emotional interactional levels, such as sensitivity, harshness, detachment, permissiveness. Items are rated on a 4-point Likert scale, though the scale has limitations as it captures only one aspect of process quality, and therefore needs to be supplemented by other measures which have more structural dimensions to assess global quality accurately.

There are some other, lesser known measurements to assess quality in ECEC settings internationally. For example, the Assessment Profile for Early Childhood Program (APECP) was developed by Abbot-Shinn and Sibley in 1992 in the United States to define a global measure of quality. This measure was designed to capture both structural and process qualities, however the latter receives considerably less emphasis. The measure includes a curriculum dimension, though the use of dichotomous items limits the in-depth understanding of quality.

Despite these measures to assess quality in ECEC settings, and partly because of them, no measure has been developed in Australia which assesses a full range of quality dimensions in ECEC settings. There is clearly a need to develop an Australian measure that sufficiently assesses all dimensions of quality ECEC settings.

Considerations for a quality rating system in Australia

Given the alternatives what is a suitable approach to measuring ECEC quality in Australia? There is opportunity to develop a comprehensive measure of quality that is at once unique and appropriate for programs implementing the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). The measure should have a strong theoretical and research base to make the system work effectively. Consideration of a quality rating system at this time would enable Australia to benefit from previous applications in US contexts, by learning their limitations. The QIAS can be used for a threshold, yet there is desire to achieve beyond the QIAS and raise the bar for higher quality.

A main consideration at this time is the issue of measurement. The credibility of ratings applied across a system is dependent on the reliability and validity of the measurement. It is important to develop a purposeful measure particularly for a quality rating system built from research and appropriate to Australian ECEC centres, as Snow and Van Hemel ( 2008) have strongly argued. To achieve sound, reliable measurement there is also need for a clear and accepted definition of program quality and high quality in Australian contexts. As noted, "quality is not a universal concept" (Sylva et al., 2003, p.46), therefore, it is important to have a definition of quality that reflects the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF): Being, Becoming and Belonging in Australia.

What then should an Australian QRS focus on in terms of measurement? Given the inadequacies of the QIAS identified above a new approach needs to take greater account of process quality to capture more breadth and depth on pedagogical components within ECEC settings.

A useful approach would be to consider CLASS (Pianta et al., 2008), the American designed approach for measuring quality in ECEC pedagogy such as teacher-child interactions in the classroom. The CLASS has much greater emphasis on measuring process quality effectively as it is uses a highly systematic observation approach with interrater reliability which is checked rigorously through an established master code on DVD. This measure has become very popular in research as well as professional development in the United States as well as internationally. However, for international use, the master code is developed only for use in American ECEC contexts and has not been validated in other international ECEC contexts nor other ECEC settings (e.g., Playgroup, Family Day Care). While this is problematic for use as it is in Australia it also provides an opportunity for creating a measure which can sufficiently measure Australian ECEC contexts.

An important challenge is to develop a means of reliably rating process quality - the quality of pedagogy - in ECEC settings. Research suggests (Early et al., 2007; Mashburn et al., 2008), that compared with the impact of process quality, the effects of structural quality is negligible on children's overall academic and social outcomes, although this research has been highly criticised. Barnett and Ackerman ( 2007) argued that structural quality as inputs (i.e., teachers' qualifications, group size, staff-child ratios, length of ECEC program) is highly significant and these factors will play a mediating role in enhancing process quality. So structural quality is important in considerations of measuring quality especially to maximize the quality of pedagogy.

Moreover, given the RAND evaluation study, star ratings are not generally linked with teacher-child interactions, a fundamental of process quality. In a new Australian quality rating system, the measurement of interactions is central to the assessment of process quality, which is known to improve children's outcomes. Finally, a culture of quality assessment that retains incentive for settings to achieve a high quality of provision is likely to advance children's development and learning outcomes. Whether a quality rating system is compulsory or not, the system needs to have a clear incentive for ECEC centres, or even individual staff/teachers, to achieve high quality programs. Further a rating system that supplies clear written feedback for future improvement and tangible mechanisms for staff development may support continuous progress and acknowledge centres for their effort toward the continuous improvement of quality.

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Quality and Early Childhood Education and Care: A Policy Initiative for the 21st Century - International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy

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The expectation of quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) is that higher quality inputs will produce higher quality outcomes for children. There are many ways that outcomes may be expressed and measured, though current procedures emphasize threshold quality.

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Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

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Place guarantee

In the Netherlands there is no legal guarantee for a place at a childcare facility. Parents themselves choose a childcare organization.

Early childhood education (VVE)

In the Netherlands, early childhood education refers to the subsidized provision aimed at preventing and reducing educational disadvantages in children aged two to six years. On indication, children are eligible for this extra support. Children with (risk) of educational disadvantage who have a VVE indication are referred to as target group children. The criteria for this indication have not been determined nationally. Municipalities themselves determine which indication criteria they use for this.

There is no legal place guarantee for a place at a childcare organization that offers early childhood education. There is no legal obligation for children and parents to participate in VVE. However municipalities do have an bligation to provide early childhood education (VVE). They are required to provide a sufficient number of VVE facilities at childcare centres for target group children.

Municipalities are obliged to realize an offer of at least 960 hours of early childhood education for every child aged 2.5 - 4 who belongs to the target group. Depending on the number of weeks over which this offer is spread, it concerns an average of about 16 hours per week (with a 40-week offer). Municipalities make agreements with childcare organizations about the provision of VVE programs and the number of target group toddlers to be placed. The purpose of this is to ensure that target group children enter primary education more successfully. The ambition is that all parents of target group children are given the opportunity to make use of VVE.

In addition to the VVE providing obligation, municipalities have an obligation to make agreements with holders of child centres to promote and encourage participation in early childhood education.

Affordability
Childcare
The Dutch government reimburses a substantial portion of the cost of childcare. The childcare benefit is called kinderopvangtoeslag. Parents can apply for childcare benefit to cover part of their childcare costs via the Tax and Customs Administration.

The childcare benefit is meant to help pay for childcare costs for working or studying parents. It is calculated on an hourly basis. The precise amount of the benefit parents receive depends on their level of income, childcare expenses and the type of childcare. In 2020, the maximum hourly rate for day care is € 8,17. All childcare in the Netherlands needs to be approved and registered by the Ministry of Health. There is a national database of registered childcare ( Landelijk registger kinderopvang). Every childcare facility in the National Register of Childcare, whether they are a daycare, an after school care facility, childminding agency or a childminder, has a unique registration number (registratienummer). Parents must use this registration number when applying for the childcare benefit.

Requirements for the childcare benefit:

* Parents are both working or studying.

* Parents have a contract with a registered childcare centre (kindercentrum) or childminder (gastouder).

* Parents pay (part) of the childcare costs.

* A valid residence or permit.

* child is registered at the same address.

The full list of conditions and exceptions can be found here (in Dutch).

Early childhood education (VVE)

Early childhood education aimed at children aged 2,5 to 4 falls under the municipal authorities. When children have a VVE indication, the municipality generally pays a (large) part of the costs for early childhood education. Parents do pay a parental contribution. For parents who are not eligible to receive childcare benefit (kinderopvangtoeslag), this parental contribution is often calculated on the basis of income. The amount of the parental contribution differs per municipality, there are no national guidelines for this.

Early childhood educaion (VVE) aimed at 4- and 5-year-olds is offered at primary schools (basisscholen) . Participation is free of charge. The Dutch government funds primary, secondary, vocational and higher education in the Netherlands.

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In the Netherlands there is no legal guarantee for a place at a childcare facility. Parents themselves choose a childcare organization. Early childhood education (VVE) In the Netherlands, early childhood education refers to the subsidized provision aimed at preventing and reducing educational disadvantages in children aged two to six years.

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Early Childhood Australia (ECA) is a non-profit organisation that promotes and works towards what is best for children and the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector. Since 1938, ECA's main focus has been advocacy, influencing many significant issues relevant to the care, wellbeing and education of young children in Australia. We develop projects in the sector and produce a variety of resources by way of subscription-based publications for our members and the broader sector which includes early childhood educators, services, academics and students. Our vision is that every young child is thriving and learning.

Our work is informed by our:

commitment to children's rights

knowledge of early childhood development, learning and pedagogy

commitment to an inclusive and just society

respect for the rights and aspirations of families

the active involvement of our members.

In order to secure the best range of options and outcomes for young children as they grow and develop, ECA works with:

Federal, State and Territory Government

Parliamentarians

Government Departments

early childhood professionals

parents and grandparents

other carers of young children

various peak organisations and lobby groups.

Early Childhood Australia advocates for the best interests of young children and where necessary, campaigns for change. As a leading early childhood publisher, we aim to identify and promote best practice in early childhood.

Early Childhood Australia does this by:

developing and advocating policies on early childhood education and care

promoting and reviewing the Early Childhood Australia Code of Ethics

contributing to the development and evaluation of government policies and programs through submissions, committee membership, delegations, and discussion with politicians and departments

promoting increased awareness and understanding of the needs of young children and their families

supporting informed debate and good practice in early childhood settings through its own specialist early childhood publications.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Early Childhood Australia (ECA) is a non-profit organisation that promotes and works towards what is best for children and the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector. Since 1938, ECA's main focus has been advocacy, influencing many significant issues relevant to the care, wellbeing and education of young children in Australia.

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Early childhood education in Australia is not compulsory and is delivered to children through a range of settings, including childcare centres and pre-schools (also referred to as kindergartens in some parts of Australia) in the year before full-time schooling.

A nationwide survey that shows how young Australian children have developed as they start full-time education. Collects data in areas such as physical health; social competence; and language and cognitive skills.

Department of Education and Training

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Early childhood education in Australia is not compulsory and is delivered to children through a range of settings, including childcare centres and pre-schools (also referred to as kindergartens in some parts of Australia) in the year before full-time schooling. A nationwide survey that shows how young Australian children have developed as they start full-time education.

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Initial education for teachers working in early childhood and school education - Eurydice - European Commission

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Initial education for teachers working in early childhood and school education

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Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

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by

Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9102, 6500 HC Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Received: 8 October 2017 / Revised: 22 November 2017 / Accepted: 28 December 2017 / Published: 30 December 2017

Early childhood education (ECE) intervention programs nowadays are the core of the educational disadvantage policy in the Netherlands. They offer institutional compensatory activities to young children who lack educational stimulation in the home environment. Target groups mainly comprise children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds and of immigrant origin. ECE is confronted with several bottlenecks, including the definition of the target groups, the quality of ECE staff, and the ECE programs. Most important is the controversy surrounding the empirical evidence of effects of ECE provisions. This article presents a description of state-of-the-art Dutch ECE, with special attention to recent Dutch studies on the effectiveness of ECE programs.

1. Educational Disadvantage

In many countries, policies to improve the educational opportunities of children from disadvantaged backgrounds have been implemented [ 1]. Educational disadvantage generally is defined in terms of low socioeconomic background and immigrant or ethnic minority origin. The focus of the present article is on the Netherlands, a country that hosts almost 17 million inhabitants of whom 22.1% have an immigrant background [ 2], among which, the largest groups are Turkish (2.3%), Moroccan (2.3%), Surinamese (2.1%), and Antillean (0.9%). What these immigrant groups share is their low level of education and high rate of unemployment. Turks and Moroccans came to the Netherlands as of the 1960s as so-called guest workers; their children now are second- or third-generation immigrants. Surinam and the Antillean islands are former Dutch colonies; many of their inhabitants arrived in the Netherlands in the 1970s for economic reasons. Large-scale longitudinal studies have shown that, at the very start of their school careers, Dutch language development of especially Turkish and Moroccan children already lagged behind by six months to more than a year [ 3]. This lag did not disappear during primary education. On the contrary, the so-called Matthew effect [ 4] seemed to occur: children of highly educated parents (usually native-Dutch) benefited more from education and therefore made more progress than children of poorly educated immigrant parents. The result was that, at the end of primary education, Turkish and Moroccan children were approximately two years behind in their language development compared to children of highly educated Dutch parents. A more recent study showed that lately immigrant children have been catching up with their native-Dutch peers, but in an absolute sense they still lag behind considerably [ 5].

The focus of attempts to combat educational disadvantages is increasingly being placed upon the preschool and early years of primary school [ 6, 7]. The underlying assumption is that many of the elements that prepare children from middle- and upper socioeconomic backgrounds for school are missing in the family situations of working class and immigrant children. Under the banner of early childhood education (ECE), all kinds of home- and center-based intervention programs have thus emerged for children between the ages of 0 and 7 years. Though the emphasis is on the linguistic and cognitive development of the children, programs often also include social, behavioral and emotional components, and this may be combined with the provision of educational and pedagogical support for the parents at home.

ECE intervention programs (which should be distinguished from regular education and care provisions for young children such as playgroups and schools) have been implemented in many European countries. Across countries, a huge variation exists, however. Differences occur, for instance, with regard to stage of policy development and implementation, regulation, organization and funding, focus and goals, target groups, enrolment rate, age group, duration and intensity, contents/curriculum, and staff characteristics [ 8, 9, 10]. In most countries, there is agreement on the decisive role of the quality; any effects of ECE are conditional on the high quality of the interventions. Two aspects are often discerned, namely process quality and structural quality. The former refers to the children's activities and interactions, the latter to, for instance, group size, children-to-teacher ratio, and teachers' qualifications [ 11]. In recent years, a growing number of countries have made substantial efforts to encourage quality in ECE.

Considerable controversy surrounds the evidence of effects of ECE provisions. The main conclusion up until now has been that any effects are very limited and in case they happen they often fade away. However, there are also signs that the situation is changing and that some positive effects may occur in the long run. Positive effects may depend on a particular set of conditions including the specific approach, the duration and intensity of the care, the quality and efforts of the caregivers, and the continuity of the service or program with the children's later care and education [ 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]. This article presents an update on the Dutch situation.

2. Early Childhood Education

Early childhood education presently is the most important element of the Dutch Educational Disadvantage Policy. This policy aims at preventing and combating educational disadvantage resulting from social, economic, and cultural factors in the home environment of children. To compensate for "lacking" educational stimulation at home, young children between 2.5 and 6 years of age are offered the opportunity to participate in an educational program aimed at developmental stimulation [ 16].

Three types of institutions offer such ECE intervention programs in the Netherlands. Daycare centers are intended for children 0-4 years of age and open every work day. The primary function of daycare centers is to provide childcare in connection with the participation of the parents in the workforce. Preschools or preschool playgroups are intended for children between the ages of 2 and 4 years and for attendance during two or three mornings or afternoons a week. The primary goal of preschools is to stimulate the social-emotional and cognitive development of children. Kindergartens include the first two grades of primary school and are for 5- and 6-year-olds. Kindergartens are whole-day institutions and offer a combination of play and learning activities aimed at preparing the children for learning to read, write, and count. Daycare and playgroups are part of the pre-school phase and are the responsibility of the municipalities; kindergartens constitute the early-school phase and are the responsibility of the school boards.

Most of the regular staff at daycare centers and playgroups have attended a three-year secondary vocational education institution, where the focus is on practical training with an accent on caring (ISCED Level 3). Regular staff at kindergartens have attended a four-year teacher-training college with an accent on learning (ISCED Level 5). There are, however, no specific initial staff training courses for ECE intervention programs, though in some schools and colleges there is a very limited amount of attention to such education. In addition, most of the developers and publishers of ECE intervention programs offer in-service training and coaching for caregivers and teachers. The formal target group of ECE are children of poorly educated parents (often immigrant parents), but both municipalities and school boards are free to define other target groups [ 17]. However, in the latter case, they do not receive extra budgets from the national ministry for such groups, but have to fund them from their own resources. ECE institutions have much freedom, for instance, in choosing from the wide array of programs available. Officially, programs are expected to focus on four domains, viz. language, arithmetic, social-emotional, and motor development. Nearly 70,000 children participate in pre-school programs and 35,000 in early-school programs [ 18]. The yearly budget for pre-school education, based on the formal target group criterion, is 254 million euro, or 3628 euro per child. It is not clear how much is spent on early-school education as this budget is included in the lump sum school boards receive from the Ministry of Education. In recent decades, billions of euros have been spent on combatting educational disadvantage, but there is no evidence of commensurate returns.

3. Bottlenecks

3.1. Target Groups

Regarding ECE, several bottlenecks have been observed in recent years [ 19]. The first one concerns the target groups. Because of the freedom for municipalities and school boards to define their own groups, a huge variety exists at present. These include, besides children of poorly educated parents, immigrant children, children of parents who do not speak Dutch well, children of parents who are addicted to alcohol or drugs, children who live in deprived urban areas, and children with learning or behavioral problems or even disorders. The latter indicates that the original disadvantage perspective (i.e., based on social milieu factors) is more and more mixed with the care perspective (i.e., based on individual developmental factors). The consequence of this is unequal treatment: in some municipalities, children can participate in ECE programs, while in other municipalities children with exactly the same problems do not receive such extra help. Another point concerns the identification of the target groups. Screening instruments are used that have not been developed for this specific purpose and that have questionable reliability and validity. In addition, it has recently been shown that the predictive validity of the formal criterion (i.e., low parental educational level) is insufficient [ 20]. The consequence is arbitrariness, resulting in many false positives-children unjustly receiving support-and many false negatives-children unjustly not receiving the support they need.

3.2. Staff

A second bottleneck relates to the quality of the staff. Quality generally is seen as the most important factor contributing to the effectiveness of ECE [ 13, 14, 21, 22]. Although the evidence for strong effects of quality in general and, more specific, of teachers' qualification on children's social and cognitive development is inconclusive, there are indications that better qualifications contribute to stronger effects [ 15, 22, 23, 24]. The core of ECE concerns the stimulation of language development. Important target groups are (grand)children of labor immigrants, of immigrants from former colonies, and of refugees. Therefore, it is crucial that the staff themselves have a good command of the Dutch language. However, several recent surveys showed that many of the staff in daycare centers and preschools only had a low level of language proficiency [ 25, 26]. They were then required to take a Dutch language course. Studies also showed that in general staff in the pre-school phase function well enough in terms of their pedagogical competencies, but not in terms of their educational capacities [ 13]. It, therefore, has been suggested that, instead of the required middle professional training level, they should have a diploma from a higher professional training institution. This is especially so because more and more target group children have learning and behavioral problems.

3.3. Programs

The last bottleneck concerns the ECE programs used. There are many different programs. A distinction often made is between home-based and center-based. Home-based programs are typically and primarily aimed at parents and, via them, their children. An important objective is to teach the parents the skills needed to stimulate the cognitive, linguistic, and motor development of their children. In addition, the parents may also receive support with respect to child-rearing and the social functioning of their children. Center-based programs are conducted in ECE institutions. The emphasis in these programs can differ but most focus on stimulating language and cognitive development. Home-based programs are not used very much nowadays, but some of the center-based programs include a smaller family component.

Until recently, it was required by the Ministry of Education that a program should be proven effective (or evidence-based). But nowadays this is not a necessity. A number of programs are included in the database of so-called effective youth interventions [ 21]. At present, only seven of these programs have been recognized, but with the exception of one program all meet no more than the lowest level of recognition, which is "theoretically well founded." The bulk of the programs have not been evaluated empirically for their effectiveness at all. Specific studies into the effects of quality of the intervention on the children's cognitive and social-emotional development are scarce. One recent large-scale study showed no effects of quality indicators such as teachers' education and experience [ 27]. This may be due to the fact that there are only slight quality differences between regular provisions for young children and special intervention programs [ 28].

4. The Foundation of ECE

The Dutch ECE policy and specifically the belief in its success is mainly built on studies into the effectiveness of ECE conducted in the USA. Ever since the 1960s, many hundreds of studies of ECE programs have been performed. The results have been summarized in a large number of literature reviews and (statistical) meta-analyses [ 7, 12, 23, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40]. The conclusion usually drawn is that high-quality programs may have a positive effect on not only the school career of the children, but also on their success in the labor market and on their functioning in society. In general, cognitive effects are larger than non-cognitive effects, but both tend to fade out after some time or even disappear altogether. To give an idea of the strength of these effects, the results of a recent large-scale meta-analysis [ 32], including a total of 123 separate studies, may be illustrative. The effect size Cohen's d for the cognitive domain was 0.23, for the school domain 0.14, and for the social domain 0.16. According to the rule of thumb provided by Cohen [ 41], an effect size of below 0.20 is negligible, between 0.20 and 0.50 small, between 0.50 and 0.80 medium, and above 0.80 large. Thus, on average, the effects are negligibly small.

In the discussions regarding the effectiveness of ECE, so-called model programs are often mentioned. These concern a few high-quality experiments conducted in the USA. They started in the 1960s and 1970s, and the participating children were followed for decades afterwards. An example is the Abecedarian Project [ 42, 43]. Fifty-seven children participated in this project; their development was compared with that of 54 children in a control group. The typical mother was African-American, was 20 years of age, had had 10 years of education, was not married, lived with her parents, and had no income. The project started in 1972, and the children (and mothers) participated from birth until they were 8 years of age, five years in preschool and three in primary school; during the preschool phase children attended the daycare center for six to eight hours per day, five days per week, fifty weeks per year . The intervention focused on the domains of knowledge, language, and behavior. Until they were 3, one staff member per three children was available, and thereafter one per six children. In addition to activities at the daycare center and school, the intervention included activities at home. The project cost $18,000 per child per year. A second famous experiment is the Perry Preschool Project [ 42, 44, 45]. This project started in 1962 with 58 3- and 4-year-olds growing up in a deprived black neighborhood. For two years, the children visited a pre-school for five half-days; a control group of 65 children did not go to pre-school. To a large extent, the background of the children was comparable to that of the children participating in the Abecedarian Project. There was one important exception: the children were also selected on the basis of their intelligence. Only children with an IQ of between 70 and 85 points could participate (these were children who are normally referred to special education institutions). In addition to the learning in the pre-school group, there was a strong home learning component. The staff members were all highly educated and had obtained a certificate to teach at a pre-school, in an elementary school, and in special education. During the project, one staff member was available for every 5-6 children. The project cost $11,300 per child per year. Both experiments showed positive effects on a number of dimensions, not only in the short term but also in the long term. Because of the randomized experimental character of the studies, these results have become the ultimate proof of the effectiveness of ECE. According to various researchers this optimism is not justified, however [ 23, 36, 46]. For instance, because of demographic developments the situation regarding the availability and quality of ECE has changed dramatically; in addition, the circumstances in the USA deviate significantly from those in many European countries. Furthermore, the model projects differ considerably from regular ECE in terms of budgets, quality, duration, and intensity.

5. The Dutch Evidence

5.1. A Meta-Analysis

A recent statistical meta-analysis [ 47, 48] integrated the results of large-scale retrospective and small-scale experimental studies conducted in the Netherlands in the period 2000-2015. This analysis included 11 separate studies with 21 different sub-studies, comprising a total of 165 effect measures in the domains of language, numeracy, general intelligence, and socio-emotional development. The measures were converted into the standardized effect size d [ 41]. The findings showed that the aggregated effect for none of the domains discerned deviated significantly from zero. The effect was 0.03, or-in the words of the researchers-"smaller than small." This result was based on more than 50,000 children and 60 million hours of ECE. These findings strongly differed from the positive success stories often heard in the USA. According to the researchers, possible reasons for this discrepancy have to do with differences in time, target population, and approach. For instance, in terms of social background, the children in the first American experiments differ enormously from the Dutch target groups; as a consequence, the margin for success in the USA is much greater than that in the Netherlands. In addition, the programs in the USA are much more intensive in terms of time than those in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the pedagogical quality of regular programs in daycare, preschools, and kindergartens in the Netherlands hardly differs from that in Dutch ECE programs. Another difference is that in the USA ECE center-based programs often have a strong home component; in the Netherlands, such combinations are rare nowadays.

5.2. A Large-Scale Cohort Study

Recently, the results of a unique large-scale cohort study called Pre-COOL were published [ 22]. According to a national newspaper, this study now finally proved that ECE indeed is effective. Closer inspection of the report, however, revealed that the results of the analyses conducted by the researchers did not support this conclusion at all. First of all, it should be mentioned that there were many methodological difficulties that made it nearly impossible to draw unequivocal conclusions. With this in mind, the following summarizes the results. In the study, the developments of three possible ECE target groups were compared based on parental education, parental ethnicity, and home language. Comparisons were made for five effect measures, namely selective attention, vocabulary, play-work attitude, counting skills, and language skills. The effect sizes in terms of Cohen's d varied from −0.44 to +0.46; in other words, sometimes the ECE target group children discerned here gained on the non-target children, and sometimes the differences increased. In no more than one analysis on a total of 15 did a positive effect of ECE appear, namely regarding vocabulary (+0.46, which means that ethnic minority children progressed more than native-Dutch children).

6. Conclusions

ECE in the Netherlands targets young children who do not receive enough educational stimulation in their home environment. It provides compensatory activation through special educational programs at daycare centers, preschools, and the lower grades of primary schools, and sometimes (also) at home. The aim of ECE is to prevent young children from starting formal schooling with significant educational delays. The present ECE has been in existence for more than 15 years, and some 4 billion euros have been invested during this period. However, there is no empirical evidence that it really works; in other words, the evidential basis is still lacking. This finding is supported by the two recent large-scale studies described in this article.

Meanwhile, substantial new investments in ECE are being made by the Ministry of Education. The ministry must realize, however, that it is crucial that its policy should be evidence-based and that adequate experimental studies are therefore desperately needed. Until then, the question remains whether all the hard work done by ECE staff has been effective.

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Early Childhood Education Intervention Programs in the Netherlands: Still Searching for Empirical Evidence

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Early childhood education (ECE) intervention programs nowadays are the core of the educational disadvantage policy in the Netherlands. They offer institutional compensatory activities to young children who lack educational stimulation in the home environment. Target groups mainly comprise children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds and of immigrant origin.

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How To Become An Early Childhood Teacher In Australia

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Early Childhood Teachers is one of the most in demand occupations in Australia. Early Childhood Teachers teach very basic numeracy, literacy, music and art to pre-primary students (Students aged between 1 - 6 years old). Perhaps more important than teaching the students basic maths and language, is the promotion of young children's social, emotional and physical development.

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internation policy + procedure Presentation