Levelling the playing field in ECEC : Results from TALIS Starting Strong 2018

The provision of high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) is widely seen as a strategy to promote a more equitable and inclusive society due to its potential to give all children, and especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, a strong basis for early development and well-being. This requires approaches that address the needs of the increasingly diverse populations of children participating in ECEC. A first step in this direction is to assess the prevalence of different dimensions of diversity (e.g., socio-economic disadvantage, special education needs, different first language, and refugee status) across ECEC centres, and the extent to which the quality of ECEC varies between more and less diverse centres. This working paper uses data from the TALIS Starting Strong 2018 survey to examine these questions in the nine participating countries, and to derive policy pointers to ensure that ECEC systems promote equity and inclusion in response to the diversity of children’s needs.