How and why investment in ECPLC benefits our society.

With the 2026 Senedd elections just around the corner, many voters are preparing to assess how parties can ensure a safe and secure future for the children in their lives. Providing effective investment and support for childcare, ensuring practitioners and settings are adequately supported to provide high-quality long-term support is the primary method in which future governments can adopt to achieve this aim.

A recent report produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) titled "Reducing Inequalities by Investing in Early Childhood Education and Care", shines a light the role that fairly funded childcare can have in achieving vital equality-based targets in which Governments are striving for, and will come to dominate the outlook of the Senedd elections.

The aim of ECPLC is to provide babies and young children with the right to learn and play in a happy, safe and healthy environment[1]. This is supported by a highly qualified, diverse and thriving workforce who put the rights and needs of children at the epicenter of their work[2]. The ECPLC vision paints a future where all children, regardless of their background, will be provided with equal opportunities to develop during this crucial part of their lives, setting the foundations for equality of opportunity and positive development throughout their lives.

This vision of the role of childcare in our society is a valuable one, as it teaches all of us just how important supporting children in those first crucial years of life is to their development. However, despite this vision, and the breadth of research supporting it, across Wales, and Europe more broadly, the childcare sector is not adequately supported to fulfill this role. Despite the ever-increasing focus on the importance of the early years, many countries do not support this focus with the correct amount of funding required, leading to an early year's sector which is largely overworked, underpaid, and most crucially, undervalued.

2022 research from Early Years Alliance found that 95% "of early years professionals do not feel respected by politicians and policy makers”[3]. These themes are picked up and expanded with academic rigor in the OECD report. Therefore, this blog will make continual reference to the OECD report, highlighting how the issues it highlights are reflected in Wales and concluding how these issues can be addressed by Policy makers.

• Availability of ECEC services[1]: "Lack of availability of ECEC services can reflect a range of factors, including insufficient capital investments or an ineffective distribution of the ECEC network across the territory. In addition, in many OECD countries, staff shortages coming from limited staff attraction, high staff turnover and poor retention remain major obstacles to the expansion of ECEC provision"[2].

Lack of availability of ECEC, referred to in Wales as ECPLC, is reported as a reality across out nation. As stated in the 'Their future, our priority' Equality and Social Justice committee report published in 2024 assessing the state of childcare in Wales, the 'variable availability' of childcare in Wales results in lower take-up rates of support[3]. Lack of availability of childcare is a significant issue, as it means a child's geographic location, something of which they have no control over, can have a direct impact on their chances of accessing all of the benefits which childcare provides. These areas are defined in academic literature as "Childcare deserts"[4]. If we are to achieve a true state of equality of opportunity, increasing availability of childcare is incredibly important.

• ECEC costs for families: "Affordability reasons for disadvantaged families and lack of ECEC access were most recurrent in Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom"[5].

The Welsh Government's Flying Start programme has made a positive impact on the affordability of childcare, especially for families from lower income backgrounds. However, families across Wales still face stark costs when it comes to childcare, often having an impact on whether the family in question has another child[6]. Whilst it is acknowledged that some costs have occurred to factors outside of the Welsh Government's control, such as the cost-of-living crisis and high levels of inflation, there are levers in which the Welsh Government can pull, especially with regards to funding the sector effectively to mitigate the need for settings to charge top up fees to enable them to effectively function, a cost which is picked up by parents.

As well as outlining the current pan-European issues facing the childcare sector, the OECD report offers a number of solutions to help ensure a healthy and sustained future for the sector. All solutions outlined are the products of increased investment in the sector by Government’s across Europe, putting children and the forefront of long-term policy making. Again, whilst these arguments are Europe wide, reflections can be taken into policy making by the Welsh Government, as discussed throughout this blog thus far, many of the issues faced are analogous.

Firstly, increasing investment in the early years will open up more opportunities for children from all backgrounds to receive access to the physical and cognitive developmental benefits of high-quality early years care. The OECD report contends "investing in high-quality ECEC is a cost-effective way to significantly enhance children's cognitive, social and emotional growth, as skills developed early on provide the basis for later development, hence a way to prepare children for their educational journey and maximise the impact of later educational investments. These positive effects are particularly strong for vulnerable children”[1]. This investment realises the power of the early years in providing all children with equal access to physical and cognitive developmental benefits for which they may not have had the opportunity to experience up to the point of accessing a childcare setting. The social justice arm of early years intervention is often lost in discourse but stands to reason as an important factor which helps national governments achieve their long-held equality targets.

A second reason outlined by the OECD report showcasing the importance of increased investment centers around staffing and how increasing the numbers of people entering the early years workforce enables the opportunity for a diversity of practice to be implemented.  The report states "International migration and displacement are complex phenomena, but one of their most visible implications for ECEC systems is the increasing share of multilingual children participating in ECEC"[2].

In relation to Wales, low staffing levels have been reported as a deep-rooted issue for a long time, with the negative impacts of overworking and negative impact on mental health and wellbeing outlined in the Early Years Wales survey conducted in partnership with ARAD in 2022[3]. Increasing investment and expanding the workforce has the dual benefit of relieving pressure on the existing workforce but also creates the conditions for an increased number of diverse voices to be at the center of child development. A broadening early years workforce is crucially important, enabling the sector to increasingly reflect the cultural diversity of individuals who call Wales home. Furthermore, settings wishing to implement an anti-racist practice will only benefit from a more diverse workforce, as practice will be more reflective, providing children with more authentic experiences of different cultural practices, celebrations and foods.

Thirdly, the OECD report outlines increased investment in the early years has the wider societal benefit of tackling inequalities in the short and long term: "Data from PISA shed light on the association between participation in ECEC and students' outcomes at age 15 and its evolution over time. In most countries, this association is positive, meaning that children who have attended ECEC for more than two years have higher performance scores in mathematics at age 15"[4]. This means investing in high quality childcare leads to better long-term attainment, which in turn helps determine a positive life course, benefiting our nation for generations to come. A society with social justice at its core aims to support people from cradle to grave.

At present, whilst significant support is provided for later life care, the cradle end of society remains undervalued and largely overlooked by current governmental funding streams. If the Welsh Government is to realise its ambitions for a society of true equality of opportunity, where your background does not have a bearing on your chances of success, ensuring that every person is provided with that best start in life must be a core foundational principle of the Government.