A critical review of the advantages and limitations of using large-scale national surveys to examine childcare patterns and the ECEC workforce in Britain

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A critical review of the advantages and limitations of using large-scale national surveys to examine childcare patterns and the ECEC workforce in Britain

Simon, A; (2019) A critical review of the advantages and limitations of using large-scale national surveys to examine childcare patterns and the ECEC workforce in Britain. Early Years: an international journal of research and development , 39 (1) pp. 4-16. 10.1080/09575146.2017.1291586. Green open access

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Abstract

OECD countries have established statistical collections to ensure quality within Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Focusing on one part of ECEC – preschool ‘childcare services’ – this paper critically reviews statistical collections specifically designed to measure childcare patterns in England alongside UK data collected for other purposes which can be used to examine childcare patterns. The paper evaluates how far these data provide a reliable basis for examining the childcare workforce, how well childcare usage and provision patterns can be analysed and the degree to which the data provide comparable geographical coverage. Results show analysis is restricted by the various ways data-sets count and classify occupations. Differences in geographical coverage make them difficult to compare. More refinement of occupation categories would make existing sources more useful. The themes discussed here are relevant for other countries seeking to understand how best to utilise their statistical collections for examining childcare patterns.

Type:	Article
Title:	A critical review of the advantages and limitations of using large-scale national surveys to examine childcare patterns and the ECEC workforce in Britain
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI:	10.1080/09575146.2017.1291586
Publisher version:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2017.1291586
Language:	English
Additional information:	Copyright © 2017 The author(s). Published by Informa UK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords:	Early childhood education, childcare, quality, early childhood policy, workforce
UCL classification:	UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1541495