ABSTRACT
The Dutch Early childhood education and care (ECEC) system is a split system with different Ministries responsible for the different subsystems. Children from the age of four are enrolled in full-day kindergarten, which is part of primary school. For children up to four years of age there are two main types of ECEC provisions. The first is centre-based day care for children from birth and the second concerns preschools for two-and three-year old children. On average, children attend day care for two full days a week, whereas children attend preschools for two-to-four half days a week. Although the two types of provisions differ in age range and socio-economic background of children and stem from different traditions (with a care and education orientation respectively), differences in structural quality have largely disappeared due to successive new legislation. The Day Care Act of 2005 incorporates a holistic framework focusing on broad areas of quality and development specifying basic safety and health regulations and regulations concerning structural quality aspects, such as group size and children-to-staff ratio. There is no national curriculum in the Netherlands. For day-care provisions there is a Pedagogical Framework, developed by researchers and stakeholders, in which the goals of the Day Care Act are further elaborated with strong connections to daily practice. As preschools usually work with a large share of disadvantaged children, these provisions use a nationally accredited education program, which is aimed at enhancing children’s broad development with a focus at language development and pre-academics within a play-based approach.
