On 8 April 2022, RTE and the World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP) organised a seminar entitled ‘Reclaiming a global common good: the right to Early Childhood Care and Education’ as part of the webinar series on ECCE and Privatization: towards inclusive access for all‘. The session was the fifth in the OMEP 2021-2 series.
During the seminar, OMEP’s World President Mercedes Mayol Lassalle introduced the context of privatisation in ECCE process and services. She discussed the work that OMEP is conducting on ECCE and privatisation, and highlighted the scope of the collaboration between RTE and OMEP over the past 18 months.
Keynote speaker Matias Urban, Professor and Director of the Early Childhood Research Centre (ECRC) at Dublin City University, Ireland, delivered an intervention which addressed the complexity of privatisation in ECCE, and the need to understand it across four core dimensions, while differentiating between small and large scale privatisations. He also discussed the increasing privatisation of education policy, and the conditions which shape education systems worldwide, and the challenges posed by the sidelining of democratic control. FInally, he discussed economic and policy based solutions, while highlighting alternative perspectives from indigenous knowledge.
Finally, RTE’s ECCE Programme Manager Rajakumari Michaelsamy introduced the new Global Survey on privatisation, a joint endeavour between RTE and OMEP which can be completed in English, French and Spanish.
The survey aims to map trends of privatisation in ECCE in different countries, and understand and analyse key challenges of privatisation in protecting rights while gathering data essential to advocate for increased public investment, legal protection, and regulatory frameworks to govern private institutions. She highlighted the uses of the survey and the objective of facilitating national and regional research/monitoring work, developing further collective advocacy strategy and networking, and building awareness and wider knowledge about privatisation and ECCE.
View the full webinar here in English
French
Spanish
Complete the survey here in English, French and Spanish.