Study on the effective use of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in preventing early school leaving (ESL) : annex 2 : European Union policy context

As indicated in ToR, the study on the effective use of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in preventing early school leaving (ESL) is expected to provide evidence and support the work of the Commission and Member States, within the Education and Training 2020 work programme. It is based on the assumption that high quality ECEC services have a positive impact on both attainment level and ESL. Although the argument that high quality ECEC services positively contribute to educational achievement and reduce risk to leave school early is widely used in public discourse, the Member States only recently recognised the ECEC as one of the effective measures in preventing ESL and important measure to decrease the number of underachievers at the school level. Therefore it is important to review how the EU policy context evolved over years regarding these issues. In this section we focus on EU policy context. First, we briefly discuss the priorities set up by the ET 2010 and ET 2020 mainly in the field of pre-primary, primary and secondary education. Second, we concentrate on the recent policy discourse at the EU level concerning the ECEC, attainment level and reducing the ESL. Education and Training work programme Education is seen as a crucial component in achieving growth and creating more and better jobs for EU citizens. As a part of the Lisbon Strategy, adopted in 2000, the Council set out broad common objectives for the education and training systems of the EU. The Strategic Framework for Cooperation in Education and Training (ET 2010) included the following objectives: - improving the quality of education and training systems; - making access to learning easier; - opening education and training to the world.