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Archive:Early childhood and primary education statistics

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Data extracted in December 2015. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database. Planned article update: January 2017.
Table 1: Number of early childhood and primary education pupils, 2013
(thousands)
Source: Eurostat (educ_uoe_enrp01) and (educ_uoe_enrp04)
Figure 1: Pupils between the age of four and the starting age of compulsory education as a share of the corresponding age group, 2013
(%)
Source: Eurostat (educ_uoe_enra10)
Table 2: Number of teachers in early childhood and primary education, 2013
(thousands)
Source: Eurostat (educ_uoe_perp01) and (educ_pers1d)
Table 3: Pupil–teacher ratios in early childhood and primary education, 2013
(number of pupils per teacher)
Source: Eurostat (educ_uoe_perp04) and (educ_iste)
Figure 2: Pupil–teacher ratios in early childhood and primary education, 2013 (1)
(number of pupils per teacher)
Source: Eurostat (educ_uoe_perp04) and (educ_iste)
Figure 3: Public expenditure on early childhood and primary education as a share of GDP, 2012 (1)
(%)
Source: Eurostat (educ_uoe_fine06) and (educ_figdp)

This article presents statistics on early childhood and primary education (ISCED levels 0 and 1) in the European Union (EU) and forms part of an online publication on education and training in the EU.

Early childhood educational development (ISCED level 01) has educational content designed for younger children (in the age range of 0 to 2 years), whilst pre-primary education (ISCED level 02) is designed for children from age 3 years to the start of primary education (ISCED level 1). Age is generally the sole criterion for admission to compulsory primary education, which starts at the age of five or six in most of the EU Member States, although Bulgaria, the Baltic Member States, Finland and Sweden have a compulsory starting age of seven. Primary education typically lasts six years, although its duration can range between four and seven years and so typically lasts until age 10 to 12.

School helps young people acquire basic life skills and competences that are necessary for their personal development. The quality of a pupil’s school experience affects not only their development, but also his or her place in society, level of educational attainment, and employment opportunities. Early childhood and primary education are important to prepare pupils for their development and mainly for the secondary level of their education. The quality of education may be linked to teaching standards, which in turn are related to the demands placed upon teachers, the training they receive, the roles they are asked to fill and the resources that are made available for them to carry out their tasks. Equally, the quality of education may show local or regional variations, related to a variety of socio-demographic factors.

Main statistical findings

Participation

The number of students found in each of the earliest levels of education varies somewhat between the EU Member States. This reflects, to some degree, the demographic structure of each population and also country-specific policies relating to the provision of early childhood education.

In the EU-28 there were just over 15 million pupils in pre-primary education in 2013. The number of pupils in primary education was 1.9 times as high, at just over 28 million.

The strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training adopted in May 2009 set a benchmark to be achieved (in the EU-27) by 2020 that at least 95 % of children between the age of four and the age for starting compulsory primary education should participate in early childhood education. Overall, 93.9 % of children in the EU-28 between the age of four and the starting age of compulsory education — which varies between four and seven depending on the EU Member State under consideration — attended school in 2013 (see Figure 1). At the lower end of the range, this ratio was 71.4 % in Croatia and also less than four fifths in Greece and Slovakia. A total of 13 Member States reported ratios that indicated that in 2013 they had achieved the benchmark of at least 95 %: Hungary, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta and France.

Teachers and pupil–teacher ratios

In all three education levels (early childhood development, pre-primary and primary education), there is a clear dominance of women. Among the five EU Member States for which the number of teachers in early childhood development is available the share of men ranged from 1.2 % of the total (in Austria) to 4.7 % (in Spain). The share of male teachers in all five of these Member States was quite similar in early childhood development to that in pre-primary education.

There were 1.2 million pre-primary school teachers in the EU-28 (excluding Denmark and Ireland) in 2013 and 2.0 million primary school teachers. Unlike their pupils, there was a large gender imbalance among teachers at these educational levels: men accounted for just 4.9 % of all pre-primary school teachers and 14.8 % of primary school teachers in the EU-28.

Only in France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom did the share of male teachers in pre-primary education reach or surpass 10.0 %, while in 10 of the 26 EU Member States for which data are available less than 1.0 % of pre-primary school teachers were men.

Among primary school teachers, the share of male teachers remained well below half but was generally somewhat higher than for pre-primary education; the main exception was France where the share of male teachers was the same for pre-primary and primary education. In Hungary, Italy, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Slovenia, less than 5.0 % of primary school teachers were men, whereas in Finland, Portugal, Sweden, Luxembourg and Spain the share of male teachers exceeded 20.0 % and in Greece it rose as high as 30.1 %.

An indicator of the quality of schooling is the pupil–teacher ratio, which provides an indication of the average number of pupils there are for each teacher. In 2013, pupil–teacher ratios were particularly low — which may generally be considered to be beneficial — in early childhood development, with ratios among the six EU Member States for which data are available ranging from 5.1 in Germany to 9.5 in Croatia, while in Iceland an even lower ratio (3.5) was recorded (see Table 3). In all of these Member States the ratios for early childhood development were lower than for pre-primary education.

The pupil–teacher ratio for pre-primary education ranged among the EU Member States from 9.0 in Estonia (the ratio also covers early childhood development) to 16.6 in Cyprus, Romania and Portugal, with France (21.6) above this range and Sweden (6.4) below it; Iceland again reported a lower pupil–teacher ratio (5.6). In a small majority of Member States, 14 out of the 26 for which data are available, pupil–teacher ratios were lower for primary education than for pre-primary education. Poland reported a particularly low ratio for primary education (11.1) compared with its ratio for pre-primary education (16.4). By contrast, Slovenia reported a notably higher ratio for primary education than for pre-primary education (16.0 compared with 9.4), as did Sweden (12.7 compared with 6.4) and the United Kingdom (21.8 compared with 15.9).

Finance

The proportion of financial resources devoted to education is measured by public expenditure as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Data are available for eight of the EU Member States in relation to public expenditure on early childhood development as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). This ratio ranged in 2012 from 0.0 % in the United Kingdom to 0.6 % in Sweden, with Iceland (0.6 %) and Norway (0.7 %) also reporting relatively high values that were in line with those recorded in Sweden.

In the EU-28 as a whole, public expenditure on pre-primary education was equivalent to 0.6 % of GDP in 2011, while for primary education the level of public expenditure was twice as high, at 1.2 % of GDP. A number of EU Member States reported a quite different pattern: in Bulgaria, public expenditure on pre-primary education was higher than public expenditure on primary education (the only Member State where this pattern was observed); by contrast, in Ireland, the level of public expenditure on primary education (2.3 % of GDP) was more than 20 times as high as that on pre-primary education (just 0.1 % of GDP). Relative to GDP, public expenditure on pre-primary education was highest (1.3 %) in Sweden and Denmark, while for primary education it was highest in Ireland, Denmark again and Cyprus, while an even higher ratio was recorded in Iceland (2.4 %).

Data sources and availability

Source

The standards for international statistics on education are set by three international organisations:

The source of data used in this article is a joint UNESCO/OECD/Eurostat (UOE) data collection on education statistics and this is the basis for the core components of Eurostat’s database on education statistics; in combination with the joint data collection Eurostat also collects data on regional enrolments and foreign language learning.


Regulation No 452/2008 of 23 April 2008 provides the legal basis for the production and development of the EU’s statistics on education and lifelong learning. Two European Commission Regulations have been adopted concerning the implementation of the education and training data. The first, Commission Regulation (EU) No 88/2011 of 2 February 2011, concerned data for the school years 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 while the second, Commission Regulation (EU) No 912/2013 of 23 September 2013, concerns data for school years from 2012/2013 onwards.

More information about the joint data collection is available in an article on the UOE methodology.

Classification

The International standard classification of education (ISCED) is the basis for international education statistics, describing different levels of education; it was first developed in 1976 by UNESCO and revised in 1997 and again in 2011. ISCED 2011 distinguishes nine levels of education: early childhood education (level 0, with level 01 for early childhood development and level 02 for pre-primary education); primary education (level 1); lower secondary education (level 2); upper secondary education (level 3); post-secondary non-tertiary education (level 4); short-cycle tertiary education (level 5); bachelor’s or equivalent level (level 6); master’s or equivalent level (level 7); doctoral or equivalent level (level 8). The first results based on ISCED 2011 have been published in 2015 starting with data for the 2013 reference period for data on pupils and teachers and the 2012 reference period for data on expenditure.

Early childhood education programmes are typically designed with a holistic approach to support children’s early cognitive, physical, social and emotional development and introduce young children to organised instruction outside of the family context. These programmes have an intentional education component and aim to develop socio-emotional skills necessary for participation in school and society. They also develop some of the skills needed for academic readiness and prepare children for entry into primary education. These programmes target children below the age of entry into primary education.

Primary education programmes are typically designed to provide students with fundamental skills in reading, writing and mathematics (in other words literacy and numeracy) and to establish a solid foundation for learning and understanding core areas of knowledge, personal and social development, in preparation for lower secondary education. It focuses on learning at a basic level of complexity with little, if any, specialisation.

Key concepts

The indicator for the share of pupils between the age of four and the starting age of compulsory education relative to the corresponding age group reflects participation rates (from the age of four) in early childhood education, in other words in early childhood development (ISCED level 01) or pre-primary education (ISCED level 02). The upper boundary to the age range that is covered varies between Member States as the starting age for compulsory education varies between countries: it is five or six in most of the EU Member States, although Bulgaria, the Baltic Member States, Finland and Sweden have a compulsory starting age of seven.

Pupil–teacher ratios are calculated by dividing the number of full-time equivalent pupils and students in each level of education by the number of full-time equivalent teachers at the same level; this ratio should not be confused with average class size, which refers to the number of students in a given course or classroom.

Tables in this article use the following notation:
Value in italics     data value is forecasted, provisional or estimated and is therefore likely to change;
: not available, confidential or unreliable value.
– not applicable.

Context

In February 2011, the European Commission adopted a Communication titled ‘Early childhood education and care: providing all our children with the best start for the world of tomorrow’ (COM(2011) 66 final). This noted that early childhood education and care is an essential foundation for successful lifelong learning, social integration, personal development and later employability and that it is particularly beneficial for disadvantaged children, with the potential to help lift children out of poverty and family dysfunction.

ET 2020 strategic framework

The strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (known as ET 2020), was adopted by the Council in May 2009. It sets out four strategic objectives for education and training in the EU: making lifelong learning and mobility a reality; improving the quality and efficiency of education and training; promoting equality, social cohesion and active citizenship; and enhancing creativity and innovation (including entrepreneurship) at all levels of education and training.

The strategy sets a number of benchmarks to be achieved by 2020, including that at least 95 % of children between the age of four and the age for starting compulsory primary education should participate in early childhood education.

See also

Further Eurostat information

Publications

Main tables

Database

Participation in education and training (educ_part)
Education personnel (educ_uoe_per)
Education finance (educ_uoe_fin)

Dedicated section

Methodology / Metadata

Metadata

  • Education (ESMS metadata file — educ_uoe_enr_esms)

Manuals and other methodological information

Source data for tables and graphs (MS Excel)

Other information

External links


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