BRISE symposium on daycare centers as places of education

A significant proportion of children in Germany attend daycare centers, for which the general term is Kindertagesstätte (Kita for short), long before they start school. As well as providing childcare for parents, Kitas take on a major role in the early-years education and socialization of young children, and are crucial to supporting them in meeting developmental milestones, particularly in cases where a child comes from difficult socioeconomic circumstances or their family speaks little or no German at home. German society has placed high hopes in the capacity of Kitas to help boost educational opportunity for children from underprivileged social strata and ensure that as many children as possible are school-ready when they reach the appropriate age.

The Bremen Initiative to Foster Early Childhood Development (BRISE) recently convened a symposium for specialists in this field, ranging from daycare practitioners, administrators, policymakers and academics to representatives of civil society. Held in Berlin on 18 November 2024, the event served as a forum for the experts to discuss the role and remit of daycare centers as places of education and share experiences from their day-to-day work. Topics under discussion at the event included various actors’ expectations of the education provided by Kitas, the challenges that daycare centers face, and ways forward for supporting them to meet the complex and demanding requirements of their societal role. Participants highlighted the noteworthy work done by Kitas in recent years; they have maintained quality during an enormous expansion in numbers of daycare places and an increase in the heterogeneity of their intakes in terms of their development and ability to engage with centers. At various points during the course of the day, speakers emphasized the need for concerted action to help daycare centers evolve toward continued and greater success in meeting their objectives.

‘Daycare centers, alongside families, are key environments in which pre-school-aged children develop and grow. It is therefore vitally important to ensure that Kitas deliver quality educational experiences, helping combat inequities in education from an early age,’ stressed Prof. Dr. Olaf Köller, Managing Director of Research at the IPN and spokesperson of the research alliance that is conducting the academic study as part of BRISE.

The study, in which the IPN has a coordinating role, has now received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for almost eight years. The IPN works with the project’s other funders, the City of Bremen and the Jacobs Foundation, to hold the BRISE symposia that support interaction and open up channels of communication among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, with the ultimate aim of increasing equality of educational opportunity.

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