I came in to work early this morning with the intention of watching the launch of the OECD’s major new international report on quality in early care and education – Starting Strong III – which was being streamed live over the internet from Norway. I stared for ages at a white box on the computer [...]
Quality and the National Children’s Strategy
It’s nearly a week since the conference and it has taken me this long to formulate a response to the issues discussed. It was unfortunate or fortunate the conference took place after as Nóirín Hayes stated, a ‘profoundly severe budget for young children’. Passions were high as evidenced in the plenary sessions and the workshops. [...]
What next?
Start Strong’s conference yesterday looked ahead to the next 6 years, discussing the National Children’s Strategy and children’s early years. But if we want to get the right Government commitments for the next 6 years, we also need to look to the next 6 months. We need the debates we started yesterday to keep going, [...]
Budget 2012
At face value Budget 2012 seemed, given the economic crisis we’re in, friendly enough to early childhood care and education. The universal free pre-school year was maintained, funding for it was even increased to take into account demographic pressures. Given that the free pre-school year is one of the few universal free early care and [...]
A moment of transformation
As I write, the great and the good of the European Union are gathering to ‘save the euro’ at what seems to be the umpteenth crisis-summit. At home, we’re uneasily digesting the 5th austerity budget and predicting the impact it will have on Irish lives. I would suspect that we don’t yet know the full [...]
Coming soon
We will be launching this new Start Strong blog shortly. It will include posts from Start Strong and from guest contributors. Watch this space!
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