Early childhood education and care in Lithuania

The importance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is well recognised in Lithuania. Its professional community shares a tradition of concern with the structural dimensions of ECEC quality – ensuring adequate space, group sizes, staffing, facilities, and hygiene – and it has developed a widely shared understanding of the essential cognitive, emotional and social skills that children need to develop in their early years. Levels of participation in ECEC are high, especially in urban areas. However, participation in ECEC lags in the nation’s rural areas, where the incidence of poverty and ill health are highest, and young children might benefit most from access to high quality ECEC. Responsibility for monitoring the quality of ECEC rests with municipal education departments, who lack ministerial guidance which would permit them to easily and routinely monitor the quality of ECEC provision. This chapter examines how Lithuania might address gaps in participation, and put in place a comprehensive system of quality monitoring.