Nearly half of preschool-aged kids, up to three years old, currently are enrolled in daycare settings.
Piecing Together the Daycare Puzzle: Challenges Beyond City Limits
The 'Annual Education Balance 2025' report, a brainchild of Edulog - Education's think tank, sheds light on the hurdles faced by families in accessing daycare for their little ones, particularly in regions outside bustling urban centers.
As more and more families seek daycare solutions, the report highlights that spatial and economic disparities remain. From 2018 to 2023, the enrollment of children under three in daycare increased by 13.8 percent. This surge, driven partly by the free Creche Feliz program (launched in 2022), has made the education landscape more inclusive, as researchers note an uptick in the number of students whose parents lack higher education - a testament to the rapidly diversifying socio-economic landscape and cultural capital of families.
Despite the growing coverage, the study cautions that daycare isn't accessible for everyone. In 2023, only 48 percent of children under three were enrolled, with the coverage rate reaching 55 percent and 130,787 places available. However, only 87 percent of these slots were filled, highlighting that demand doesn’t always synchronize with supply. Families in Lisbon, Porto, the southwest Alentejo, and the Algarve often grapple with this disparity.
The report also flags potential pitfalls in the quality of pedagogical training for daycare professionals. Just about 6 percent of the curriculum for the Bachelor’s Degree in Basic Education is dedicated to the care of children under three, hinting at a possible deficiency in preparing educators to serve this demographic effectively.
This research, tracing the path from daycare to higher education, underscores a growing accessibility of families to the education system, with attendance rates increasing across all levels. In fact, universal education seems on the horizon for both early childhood education and primary and secondary education: Every child aged between six and fourteen is already attending school, and almost 90 percent of teenagers attended secondary schools in the 2022-2023 academic year.
However, the researchers call attention to persistent territorial and socioeconomic imbalances. Supply is mainly concentrated in major cities, leaving less-populated regions underserved. For instance, in preschool, 94 percent of children aged three to five attended school, with schools in the center boasting the highest enrollment rate (99.9 percent). On the other hand, the Setúbal Peninsula trails behind, registering the lowest enrollment rate in the country (83.1 percent).
In essence, challenges beyond urban centers in providing quality daycare include geographical disparities with inadequate services in low-density regions, a mismatch between supply and demand, concerns about the quality of early childhood educator training, and regional discrepancies in enrollment rates, all of which are highlighted by the Edulog report.
- The Edulog report suggests that families in Portugal, especially those in the Algarve and less-populated regions, often face difficulties in accessing quality daycare, due to a mismatch between supply and demand, geographical disparities, and concerns about the quality of early childhood educator training.
- Despite the growth in daycare enrollment, the report indicates that personal growth and learning opportunities may be limited for young children in regions beyond bustling urban centers like Lisbon and Porto, as these areas tend to receive more focused attention and resources, leading to disparities in education and self-development.
- As the demand for daycare services continues to rise in Portugal, it is crucial for Education's think tank, Edulog, to focus on the news and developments related to early childhood education and self-development in under-served regions like the southwest Alentejo and the Algarve, in order to ensure that every child has equal access to learning opportunities and personal growth.
