How child care in Copenhagen is “democratized’’
🇩🇰 🇬🇧 Danish researcher, Sigrid Brogaard Clausen, at the University of Roehampton is part of important group of researchers who debate and investigate fundamental trade-offs in how to care for children in daycares. She writes:
''The influence of schoolification is exemplified in a detailed analysis of the raised expectations with regard to language assessment in England and Denmark. This discussion reveals the tensions between 1️⃣ local democratic participation in early years communities and 2️⃣ policy agendas that emphasize preparation for school.''
https://lnkd.in/dZVS9-sw
💡 I wonder if comparative analysis of admissions systems might also give us insights about how the choice of centralized admission systems might impact how daycare evolves in the 1️⃣ 2️⃣ spectrum, and how we might manage the trade-offs. Two examples illustrate this:
🇮🇹 Bologna, Italy: Parents are asked to order list ten daycares in their application, and allocation is based on a best-practice algorithm with priorities that resembles a lottery — but favors low-income households. The city learns what daycares are popular but parents are left in the dark about what daycare they will be admitted to when they apply. Parents meet with daycares on a fixed date each year, with limited opportunity to experience all listed options in real operational settings due to the sheer number of daycares listed.
🇮🇹 Read Margherita Fort, Andrea Ichino, and Giulio Zanella's research on the Bologna system and their measurement of daycare outcomes on child IQ in https://lnkd.in/d64__sFW
🇩🇰 Copenhagen, Denmark: Parents can effectively choose any daycare in the city and when to start - Some daycares do not offer earlier start dates due to popularity. This system fosters a parent-centered atmosphere, where families can visit any daycare throughout the year, observe and meet with staff interacting with children in real time, and set mutual expectations well before the child enters daycare.
Both Bologna and Copenhagen maintain high-quality systems reflecting Europe’s leading pedagogical approaches. However, if the goal is to design daycare systems that lean toward 1️⃣ schoolification or 2️⃣ democratization, the structure of centralized admission systems might be a crucial factor. Were either system to adopt the other’s admission model, one could imagine a substantial reorientation of pedagogical practices along these axes.