Early Years Education Website Reviews

The Reviews section of the Early Years journal now contains reviews of websites as well as books. Increasingly, useful information, analysis and discussion in relation to Early Years education is contained on websites and many of us use these sites for these and other purposes on a regular basis.

If you have a favourite site that you would like to let everyone else know about, or a site you think we should avoid, could you write a short review for the journal? One recently published example is reproduced below.

Please email (or send on disc) your reviews to:

David Whitebread, Reviews Editor, Early Years, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Homerton Site, Hills Rd., Cambridge CB2 2PH

email: dgw1004@hermes.cam.ac.uk

The OECD Early Childhood Education & Care
http://www1.oecd.org/els/education/ecec/

This site is part of the much larger OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) site and contains a wealth of information concerning early education and care in a range of European countries, including the UK, and the United States. It is the official website of the authoritative and ambitious OECD Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care Policy which was conducted between autumn 1998 and summer 2001.

In order to examine thoroughly what children experience in the first years of life in each country, the review studied policy, programmes and provision for children from birth to compulsory school age, including the transition period from ECEC to primary schooling. To contribute to the review each participating country drafted a Background Report that provided a concise overview of the country context, major issues and concerns, distinctive ECEC policies and provision, innovative approaches and available evaluation data.

A multinational team of reviewers with diverse policy and analytical backgrounds then studiedthe Background Report and other relevant materials, prior to conducting an intensive case study visit of the country in question. Following the Review Visit, a Country Note was prepared by the OECD Secretariat, which draws upon information provided in the Background Report, the Review Team assessment and other relevant sources. Each Note provides insights into current ECEC policy within the particular country, the major challenges encountered, the means adopted to meet national goals and explores feasible policy options to ensure quality, access and equity.

These Background Reports and Country Notes, all of which are available and downloadable from the website, are very comprehensive and extensive and contain a wealth of information about provision and policy in each country. The Background Report for the UK, for example, written by Chris Pascal & Tony Bertram, is a 101 page report which deals with, amoung other issues, the historical roots of UK ECEC services, current ECEC provision, current themes in govenrment policy and the nature of policies currently impacting on ECEC issues, approaches to staffing, qualifications and training, the Early Childhood Curriculum, funding and financing, current research and evaluation of initiatives. The UK Country Note, published in December 2000, is a further 55 page document and provides yet more information and analysis on these and other issues.

The Thematic Review process was completed by the drawing up of a Comparative Report drafted by the OECD Secretariat. This report provides a comparative analysis of major policy developments and issues in the 12 participating OECD countries. As such, it highlights innovative approaches, and proposes policy options that can be adapted to varied country contexts. Looking towards the future, the report proposes eight key elements of successful policy for decision makers seeking to promote equitable access to quality early childhood education and care. It is published (and can be ordered directly from the website) as part of the proceedings of a conference entitled 'Starting Strong: Early Childhood Education and Care', which was co-organised by OECD, the Ministry of Education and Science in Sweden and the Swedish National Agency for Education and held in Stockholm, 13-15 June 2001.

If all this wasn't enough, clicking back to the OECD Homepage (www.oecd.org) reveals a wealth of more general information about education and related topics across Europe and the USA. Of particular interest to myself I quickly found whole sections on comparative education statistics, e-learning, Teacher's for Tomorrow's Schools - an analysis of World Education Indicators, Millenium Development Goals, and papers from the Learning Sciences & Brain Research Conference held in New York, June 2000.

As with any good website, you could get lost inside this one for hours. To help you use the site more efficiently, however, there is the facility to customise the website to your own particular areas of interest, and you can email an OECD expert with questions about the information provided. For any serious student of the early years scene, definitely one to be bookmarked.

DAVID WHITEBREAD
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education