Lessons from Reggio Emilia

When a child is treated as an active participant in its own care, instead of an empty vessel, it is given the strongest foundation for life

The government is preparing to publish a 10-year strategy for childcare in which - for the first time - a proposal for its longterm direction will be spelt out. New Labour has made no secret of the fact that the destination should be good-quality, affordable childcare for all who want it.

In Britain, universal childcare is one of the few frontiers of the welfare state left to navigate. In this respect, we have lagged behind other industrialised countries. We are some 30 years behind Scandinavia, which foresaw the challenges presented by more women entering the workforce, and took measures to ensure that children were not forgotten amid rapid labour market changes. Countries from New Zealand to the Netherlands have also rethought their childcare systems. What lessons can we learn from them? What does good early years provision look like, and how can it best be funded?

Attempts to define good-quality childcare usually rely on quantifiable indicators such as staff/child ratios. However, experience from other countries suggests that we might do better to reflect on the totality of a child's experience, and that the best early years services are based on a child-centred understanding of education.

One place stands out as offering a standard against which all others can be measured - it is not a country but a city. Young children's services in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia, and the pedagogical theory on which they are based, have a worldwide reputation. What takes place in the 30 or so centres that cater for children under the age of six in Reggio Emilia couldn't be laid down in a curriculum or instruction manual.

Their approach is informed by an image of the child, not as an empty vessel into which the right ingredients must be poured, but as a being with extraordinary potential. Great emphasis is placed on encouraging curiosity and innovation, with both children and teachers engaged in a constant process of discovery. The child is not seen as a passive recipient of education or care, but as an active participant. Staff are confident and articulate, and parents are encouraged to be involved. The outcomes are neither predeterminable nor necessarily measurable. But countless testimonies suggest they offer children the strongest foundation for life.

Could such an approach be adopted here? The childcare debate in Britain focuses on the perceived need to improve early years curricula or to tighten regulation, but compared to other countries, Britain already has some of the toughest regulations. We have chosen to go down the route of "inspecting out" poor quality, rather than investing in a highly trained workforce that can be depended on to deliver optimal experiences for children. Differences in qualification levels speak for themselves. To become a Danish pedagogue requires three to four years of higher education training. Most British childcare workers are not required to have passed an A-level, and few senior staff hold a degree.

One thing is certain: quality costs. No country has managed to develop good-quality childcare paid for entirely out of parents' pockets. Deciding how the costs should be shared is a matter for each society to judge. Since the 1990s, Dutch policy has been for childcare costs to be split equally between parents, employers and state. This tripartite model was born out of a tradition of strong social contracts, embodied in collective labour agreements, a history that Britain does not fully share.

In Denmark, federal law prohibits local authorities from charging parents more than 33% of the cost of a childcare place. Each local authority is allowed to set charges according to parents' means within this overall limit. Sweden, by contrast, has defined affordability in relation to the proportion of income that parents can be expected to contribute. The maximum fee that parents pay is 3% of their income for their first child, reduced for subsequent children.

This would be equivalent to charging parents £21 per child per week, a massive reduction on Britain's typical childcare weekly costs of around £130. But it has taken Sweden more than 30 years to get to this point, and this level of affordability is unlikely to be achieved in Britain within 10 years. Nevertheless, closing the gap between what British parents and their continental neighbours pay must surely be a priority.

Finally, what can be learned about building a consensus on an approach to the early years? In Scandinavia there is such strong public support for investing in childcare that any proposal to reduce the state's contribution would be deemed political suicide. We are long way from that.

New Zealand, whose childcare tradition has been similar to our own, perhaps offers more relevant lessons. The government there has recently embarked on a 10-year plan to improve the quality of its childcare provision by investing in workforce reform. A commitment has been made to achieve a 100% teacher-trained workforce by 2012. The level of ambition is impressive, and it has been matched by an approach to policy-making that is likely to ensure its childcare reforms will not become a casualty of any future political changes. The 10-year plan was drawn up following extensive public consultation.

Here, too, widespread public support will be crucial to the successful implementation of the government's vision for early years provision to meet the needs of the modern labour market and our youngest children.

· Lisa Harker is chair of the Daycare Trust

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