Taub Center Early Childhood Seminar participants comment

The reasons behind the low quality of ECEC frameworks for children from birth to age 3

Liat Eilam | Partnerships Director at 121 Engine for Social Change and a representative of In Good Hands, Headquarters for Investing in Early Childhood; Taub Seminar graduate 2022

We attribute the highest important to an in-depth and systematic assessment of the effectiveness of ECEC for ages birth to 3 and its influence on children in the long run. We welcome the professional and important work of the Taub Center in this direction.

We agree with the hypothesis of the researchers, according to which participation in ECEC frameworks does not have a long-term effect on the achievements of students due to its low quality (Vaknin & Shavit, 2021, Table 3 and 4). The information we have gathered on the low level of training and the low level of guidance in the field supports this hypothesis, as do the insights of experts and professionals with whom we work on a regular basis.

In view of the importance of ECEC quality, we feel that it is essential to analyze the factors explaining its low level in a comprehensive and in-depth way. The study carried out by Vaknin and Shavit cites a lack of standards or their poor enforcement and it concludes with the hope that the implementation of the Daycare Supervision Law will improve the contribution of ECEC to the cognitive development of very young children and their future academic achievements.

However, setting standards and enforcing them will not contribute to the quality of the frameworks if those standards are too low. This is the situation with regard to the supervisory regulations adopted in early 2021. For example, the regulations establish a ratio of 11 children ages 2–3 for every staff member, which is almost double the level prevailing in other developed countries; the staff is required to have only 150 hours of training, which is not sufficient to acquire the skills they need; each framework is required to allocate only four monthly hours to staff training (about one-quarter of the minimum specified in the Rosenthal Report, 2009); and there is no requirement of training or education for instructors. Such low standards — even if the supervisory mechanism is highly effective — will perpetuate the low level of quality that currently exists in the field. The ECEC frameworks will improve only when they are allocated the resources needed to increase the number of staff per child, improve training and instruction, and raise salaries to a level that will attract educators with the necessary knowledge and skills and will keep them in the profession. The only realistic source of such resources is an increase in the government budgets for children ages birth to 3, which are currently very small. Thus, Israel invests about $600 per year in each child, in contrast to an annual investment of $10,200 in the OECD countries. Parents currently bear about 82% of the cost of their children’s participation in ECEC frameworks, as opposed to 29% on average in the OECD countries. As long as the system continues to rely on parents’ resources, the quality of the ECEC frameworks will not improve and only relatively well-off parents will be able to ensure a high-quality early education for their children.

Early Childhood in Israel: Selected Research Findings, 2022