ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses wider issues affecting childhood and education in the twenty-first century which is characterised by an increasingly globalised, but more unstable, world economy and recurring financial crises. It focuses on four key aspects of wider contemporary issues that have impacted on global childhoods. These are: children’s health and well-being, child poverty, English as an Additional Language inclusion of migrants and intercultural perspectives. Case studies are used to provide different insights and lenses. The chapter reviews the nature and extent of child poverty and explores the consequences on children’s early education and care. In the Nordic countries the growth of Early Childhood Education and Care services started earlier and was due to a development in the labour market where women were part of the industrialisation and led to a vast expansion in the 1960s and 1970s. Children’s less successful progress in education is often blamed on their own and/or their parents’ poor aspirations.
