Gaps in Care: (E)quality ECEC in Nordic Early Childhoods

This chapter indicates the importance of quality care using Denmark as an example where (e)quality is still a considerable challenge. Despite a year-long political focus, the (dis)advantaged home area and children’s family backgrounds still have a major impact on development and performance throughout the school years, beginning at an early age. With the knowledge of the importance of quality environments, ECEC practices can prevent children from disadvantaged backgrounds from developing special needs, making high-quality ECEC a prerequisite for a more inclusive school system. This study examines the quality of 12 ECEC centres in six municipalities. The method is both qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative data were used for the selection procedure. The qualitative data show that children’s language development is connected to (dis)advantaged backgrounds. Other studies of children’s development reveal this as well. This study adds to the literature by looking at the environmental quality of the centres; here, the centres with high language scores have high environmental quality, and the centres with low language scores have lower environmental quality. This is critical to children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds because these children need high-quality ECEC to close achievement gaps. The children are faced with gaps in achievements (low language scores) and care (low ECEC environmental quality).