IJEC (2010) 42:131–139
DOI 10.1007/s13158-010-0016-4
Early Childhood Care and Education in Greece: Some
Facts on Research and Policy
Éducation et accueil de la petite enfance en Grèce:
Certaines données sur la recherche et les politiques
Servicios de educación y cuidado para la primera
infancia en Grecia: Algunos hechos sobre la
investigación y las polı́ticas
Konstantinos Petrogiannis
Published online: 5 October 2010
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract Despite the increasing demand for early child care and education
(ECCE) services in Greece, the availability of such services continues to be rather
limited compared to other European countries. In accordance, the relevant research,
especially for children under 3 years of age, is almost nonexistent. This article
discusses in brief some findings on ECCE research and policy in Greece.
Résumé Malgré une demande croissante de services d’éducation et d’accueil des
jeunes enfants (EAJE) en Grèce, la disponibilité de telles structures reste faible par
rapport à d’autres pays européens. Conséquemment, la recherche sur le sujet, et en
particulier sur les enfants de moins de 3 ans, est quasi inexistante. Cet article
présente brièvement quelques données issues de la recherche et de la politique en
matière de petite enfance dans ce pays.
Resumen A pesar de la creciente demanda de servicios de educación y cuidado
para la primera infancia en Grecia, la oferta de tales servicios sigue siendo más
bién limitada en comparación con otros paı́ses europeos. Consiguientemente, la
investigación relacionada, especialmente sobre niños menores de 3 años de edad, es
casi inexistente. Este artı́culo presenta brevemente algunos hechos sobre la
K. Petrogiannis (&)
Department of Preschool Education, Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupolis,
3rd klm Makris-Chilis Avenue, 68100 Alexandroupolis, Greece
e-mail: [email protected]
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K. Petrogiannis
investigación y las polı́ticas para la educación y el cuidado para la primera infancia
en Grecia.
Keywords Greece Early childhood care and education Research Policy Children under 3
In Greece, a number of socio-economic changes have progressively taken place over
the last 40 years, such as the loosening of family ties, the distance between young
parents and their family of origin, the increase in divorce rates, the growing numbers
of single-parent families, the diminished family size, the change in values, the
intense urban migration, a migration wave from other nearby countries since the
early 1990s as well as a progressive change in educational policy (Bagavos 2001,
2005). These conditions have created new demands for early child care and
education (ECCE) provision although such services are not considered enough to
fulfil the demand. According to relatively recent estimations 110,000 children aged
between 5 months and 5 years—representing more than the 20% of the population
of this particular age group—attend 1 of the 3,000 nurseries (KEDKE-EETAA
2005; Tsoulea and Kaitanidi 2005). If to this figure we add on the additional
numbers of preschool children who seek public preschool services due to the recent
economic crisis then the whole picture even more disappointing.
The history of early care and education in Greece starts in the 1830s with the
formation of charitable orphanages. Until 1995 ECCE institutions went through five
phases of development (Papathanassiou 1997). In 1996 a sixth phase began following
the transfer of the former state nurseries to local authorities. The variety of early child
care and education arrangements is rather limited compared to other western
European countries and is characterized by a ‘‘split model’’, which exists in other
countries as well (David 1993; Zambeta 1998), to two parallel and distinct structures.
Early childhood education, represented by kindergartens (nipiagogeion), is the
first formal pre-primary educational stage which provides services for children
4–6 years of age and, since 2006, is compulsory for children aged 5–6 years old.
These settings, either in the private or in the public sector, come under the
supervision of the Ministry of Education and provide exclusively educational
services based on a newly introduced national curriculum, which places particular
emphasis on an interdisciplinary and thematic approach to teaching. Those
kindergartens with standard schedules operate between 8:00 am and 12:30 pm
and the ‘‘whole-day’’ kindergartens until 4:00 pm. Since 1988 the kindergarten
teachers have been graduating from the eight university departments of preschool
education in the country.
Early childhood care, the second model, is represented only by ‘‘day care
centres’’ or nurseries (pedikos stathmos) since there is no other type of group-based
child care provision similar to other European countries such as childminders or
family day care, au pairs, playgroups or organized family care, etc. The day care
centres are run mainly by the private and the public (through municipalities) sectors
and provide their services (with minor variations depending on the provider and the
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sector) to children aged between 2 months (or 7 months for the public sector
nurseries) and up to 5 years of age. For the 4-year-old children group parents may
select to register their child either at a day care centre or at a kindergarten. In
addition, although a number of private sector’s day care centres are licensed to have
kindergarten classes this is not the case for the municipal nurseries.
Within nurseries children are divided, in most cases, into mixed gender, separate
age groups. Nurseries traditionally offer custodial care with some education services
(depending on the case) for up to 8–9 h a day, 5 days a week. They have mixed
educational personnel—nursery nurses/teachers, nursery assistants and kindergarten
teachers. The head teachers have almost exclusively administrative tasks and duties.
Depending on the case their supervision comes under the Ministry of Interior (the
municipalities’ centres), Health and Welfare (concerning the licensing of the private
day care centres) or the Ministry of Education (for the case of licensing of the
kindergarten classes). Nursery nurses/teachers are graduates of one of the three
relevant departments of Higher Technological Institutes around the country,
whereas nursery nurses’ assistants normally hold a post-secondary education college
diploma following a 2-year training course.
Research on Greek Early Childhood Care Context
While some European countries have invested significantly, both in research and
practices, in preschool and early primary education so as to give children a ‘‘good
start’’ and prepare them for successful schooling, in Greece demand for high-quality
ECCE services is treated as a ‘‘luxury’’ rather than a necessity (Petrogiannis 2006).
With regard to research for children under 3 years of age in ECCE, the issue of
quality has been marginally researched with the lack of available information on the
quality of childcare services in Greece widely documented (e.g. Mantziou 2001;
Municipality of Athens 1998; Papaprokopiou 2003; Papathanassiou 1997; Petrogiannis 1995, 2001). Even the term ‘‘quality’’ is scarcely met in relevant Greek
literature and discussions, including the relevant legislative texts.
The few research studies that have been conducted converge on certain points
despite their different methodologies and time periods (Papaprokopiou 2003). The
first report concerning the quality of day nurseries comes from the study of Tsiantis
et al. (1988, 1991) that was carried out to develop a global quality measure taking
into account for the intercultural features of a variety of day care systems.
Lambidi and Polemi-Todoulou (1992a, b) have carried out another study with
toddlers attending day nurseries in Athens and have assessed the care giving
environment with the aid of ECERS (Harms and Clifford 1980) and the
‘‘Assessment List of the Preschool Environment’’, a list of 187 observation-based
criteria devised for this study, that assessed six dimensions of the socio-emotional
organization of the environment. In this study, 60 day care centres of all types
(state-, municipal-, private-, syndicate-funded) were included in the study. These
day care centres were divided into three groups according to their size (\40, 41–80
and 80? children). A number of differences were observed among the private,
states and municipalities’ day care centres, reflecting a particular educational and
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care orientation. In general, (a) the private sector nurseries reflected a ‘‘child-centred
orientation’’ which is translated, according to the authors, to centres with younger
caregivers, better caregiver-to-child ratios and less concern for the personal and
professional needs of caregiver, despite demanding a high standard of care
provision; (b) the (formerly) state nurseries reflected an orientation towards the
operational aspects of the care giving setting: a considerable number of these
centres presented the lower caregiver pro-child ratios, and a greater concern for the
professional needs of the staff. The staff provided simple minding duties with less
play and other education-oriented activities than at private nurseries; (c) finally, in
the municipal-funded nurseries there was a balance between these two extremes:
with more child-oriented activities, which were expressed through dramatization
and role play, a sufficiency of play materials, and ‘play-corners’ in the classroom; as
well as a greater interest in the professional and training needs of the staff.
The ECERS global assessment showed that nurseries, in total, gave more
emphasis to those aspects of organization related to the minding routine, cleanliness,
safety (which is considered by parents to be a very important factor for nursery
selection—see also Kritikos 2001) and supervision. However, nurseries seemed to
give less emphasis to the organization of educational activities, dramatization and
role-play, and the provision of play materials, thus yielding findings very similar to
those of other studies (Petrogiannis 1995; Mantziou 2001). A common negative
feature was the lack of sufficient space, especially for outdoor activities, a problem
steadily recognized (Papaprokopiou 1989; Karimali 2004), both by the parents
(AMDC 2003) as well as the nursery staff (Tsakiri 1999).
In another study using the ITERS scale (Petrogiannis 1995), an important finding
was the low quality of childcare (lower total ITERS score) observed in 25 infant/
toddler centres in the broader area of Athens. The highest score was observed in the
‘Interaction’ subscale, a finding consistent with that in the Lambidi and PolemiTodoulou study (1992a, b). However, when adult pro-child ratios and ITERS total
scores (Harms et al. 1989) were jointly controlled, it was revealed that in lower
quality centres’ caregivers exhibited harsher and overly controlling behaviour
during their interactions with the children. Finally, with regard to the ‘‘group size’’
variable it was found that when caregivers supervised fewer children, they were
more likely to avoid enforcing discipline. Similar evidence has been found in a more
recent study as well (Mantziou 2001).
With regard to the global quality measures used in the Greek context it should be
added that it has been demonstrated (Petrogiannis and Melhuish 1996) that ‘‘global
quality measures’’ such as ITERS (Harms et al. 1989), the ‘‘Assessment Profile for Early
Childhood Programs’’ (Abbott-Shim and Sibley 1987) and the ‘‘Child Care Facility
Schedule’’ (Dragonas et al. 1995; WHO 1990) are highly correlated, indicating that
these measures assess similar aspects of the Greek day care environment.
Parents’ and Nursery Teachers’ Perceptions and Involvement
The above-mentioned quality features of day care centres should be seen in relation
to the perceptions and needs of parents and educational staff. Nursery teachers have
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tended to blame day care nursery problems due to staff shortages (Papathanassiou
1997; Papaprokopiou 1989; Tsakiri 1999).
Another interesting finding is the limited participation of parents in the everyday
activities of child care centres although this depends heavily on sector and type of
centre (Papaprokopiou 2003; AMDC 2003). In addition, it is a pervasive finding that
parental interest is restricted to matters of children’s safety and nutrition
(Papaprokopiou 1989) ignoring educational issues and issues related to the
‘‘relationships between preschool services and the local community’’ (LaloumiVidali 1998).
In Papaprokopiou’s study (2003), nursery teachers thought that parents were not
interested in their child’s care and education. Even though Tsakiri’s study (1999)
showed that parents were keen to cooperate with nurseries, their interest was mostly
confined to questions about whether their child did eat or not in the nursery, nothing
else (Papaprokopiou 2003). Other studies have revealed similar findings: parents
collaborate with nursery staff only when it concerns the health and well being of
their child, they do not collaborate in, or question, their child’s educational
experiences. Laloumi-Vidali’s (1998) study, concerning parents’ perceptions of the
types and importance of early childhood services and their satisfaction with the
educational services, had some interesting findings. When parents were asked to
name important factors in early childhood services, such as ‘‘interpersonal
relationships between child and teacher’’, parents appeared to place less importance
on ‘‘recreation’’ and ‘‘collaboration with parents’’, confirming the earlier findings of
Papaprokopiou (2003). The study showed that parents are most willing to
collaborate with early childhood professionals about aspects of childhood care
rather than education, even though it has been shown that parents expect preschool
children to have access to combined early childhood care and education facilities
(Laloumi-Vidali 1998; Tsakiri 1999; Kritikos 2001) reflecting a holistic, integrated
approach to early childhood services.
Concerning their needs, both parents and teachers saw the training of staff as a
high priority (Tsakiri 1999). Definitely, innovative educational interventions seem
to have a positive effect. The ‘‘Synergie’’ project, for example, implemented in a
small number of nurseries within the municipality of Athens and in Pistoia, Italy
(Anagnostopoulou and Papaprokopiou 2003; Iozelli 1998; Ntoliopoulou 2000),
showed that where ongoing training is supported by the local authority, both
community links and professional standards improve.
Finally, with regard to the potential relationship between children’s experiences
from the early childhood care and education settings with their development, a
number of interesting findings have been revealed from the extremely limited
number of studies. When both day care and family characteristics are used to predict
children’s development, the combination explains more of the variance in a child’s
behaviour than either day care or family characteristics alone (Howes and Stewart
1987). Following this line of thought Petrogiannis (1995) conducted a study with
123 children, 60 with and 63 without nursery care experience. He focused on their
individual characteristics and on structural, contextual and process aspects of both
home and day care environments. The findings suggested that there were consistent
effects of both caregiving environments on language and partly on social-emotional
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development. Home-cared children had higher cognitive and linguistic scores, but
were more excitable when interacting with the female researcher, which is
understandable given the wider social experience of the day care children. When
considering only the group-cared children, it was found that the day care history of
the child, the overall quality of the in-home environment and the overall quality of
the out-of-home environment were correlated with aspects of cognitive and
language development. How the mother understood and approached the maternal
role was also critical for their social development.
More recently Mantziou (2001), based on the theoretical work of Torrance (1972;
see also Graesser et al. 1994; Marksberry 1979), studied the effects of nursery
organization, looking at the types of educational activities, and measuring the quality
of early childcare by recording the way children ask questions. These questions are
usually characterized as either ‘‘identification’’ questions which focus on a more
superficial gathering and labelling of information and experience (e.g. ‘‘what is
this?’’), ‘‘substantial/transformational’’ questions that require more advanced levels
of thought and analytical processes, reflecting and enhancing children’s autonomous
learning (e.g. ‘‘why we look far with the binoculars?’’), or ‘‘routine/procedural’’
questions (e.g. ‘‘where is the scissor?’’, ‘‘what colour shall I use for the house, white
or brown?’’). The study was carried out in a northwestern town in Greece, using a
semi-experimental design, in 17 day nurseries with a sample of 70 children between
4‘ and 5‘ years of age. The findings revealed that positive teaching behaviour and
higher quality care provoke children into asking more substantial questions. Children
in lower quality care were more likely to ask identification questions. According to
Mantziou, the children in lower quality care asked a limited number of substantial
questions because: the ‘‘climate’’ of the classroom did not promote interaction
between the children; nursery teachers used an ‘‘authoritative’’ style to control
children’s behaviour, a finding that agrees with earlier studies (Papaprokopiou 2003);
nursery teachers displayed a lack of the appropriate pedagogical knowledge and
techniques needed to provoke different kinds of questions; nursery teachers had low
expectations of the children’s questioning abilities.
Conclusion
Despite some improvements recorded (i.e. legislation, transfer of responsibilities) in
the last decade in the field of early childhood care and education in Greece, there is
still a substantive lack of services in these areas. The existing early childcare
services have only been minimally altered (Anagnostopoulou and Papaprokopiou
1998) providing arguments that the whole system of day care provision still suffers
from poor, haphazard regulation (Foskolos 2001; Stathakou 1997). Both the
government and local authorities attribute this poor regulation and inspection of
childcare services to an absence of trained personnel to staff supervisory bodies
(Foskolos 2001). This lack of resources is indicative of the low priority given to
early care and education in Greece.
In contrast with what is happening in other EC countries (Melhuish and
Petrogiannis 2006), psycho-educational research especially on ECCE issues is at an
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‘‘embryonic’’ level, and the limited empirical studies that have been carried out
were narrowly focused and with limited financial resources (Chatzidimos 2002).
According to a number of experts (e.g. Evangelou and Dafermou 2005;
Papathanassiou 1997; Flouris 2002) there is a variety of facts that are related with
this underdevelopment of research:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
the division of early education and care, since nurseries are understood to
‘‘simply’’ care for children without providing education
the lack of interest in preschool care and education shown by university
education departments
the relatively recently established (since the mid-1980s) educational studies and
teacher training in a university level. Until then most kindergarten and primary
school teachers were trained at 2-year training colleges with a clear vocational
orientation through which they acquired practical teaching knowledge and skills
the lack of graduate studies in education since they were officially endorsed in
the 1990s. The lack of graduate schools of education has had a negative impact
in both the expertise training and education of qualified researchers within the
educational community and the advancement of educational research
the orientation of the university schools of education in a transmission of
‘‘knowledge model’’ (Spodek 1991) that is relevant to the content subject area,
than to how the various subjects ought to be taught
the lack of psychology departments until the early 1990s
a lack of a research tradition that affects the development and use of educational
research and the resulting knowledge
a lack of coordinating agencies as well as of financial investment and a very
weak linkage between educational research and policy
the extremely low financial investment is probably the most serious issue for the
underdevelopment of research and in particular in social sciences including
psychological and educational research (Flouris 2002).
With regard to the younger children (\3 years) the extremely limited number of
studies has been focused on cognitive and social development issues (e.g. the effects
of television on the behaviour of young children) as well as on medical issues. The
few Greek studies that have been conducted in this area indicate that further
research is needed to determine the developmental consequences of children’s
experiences in Greek early childhood care and education institutions, both public
and private, especially for those under 3 years of age.
‘‘Good’’ nursery provision needs constant reassessment. Its definition varies with
time and socio-cultural conditions. In an era of dramatic demographic and sociopolitical changes across Europe, including the recognition of multicultural groups
(Fthenakis 1998), policy makers, at either the national or local authority level, need
to base changes in early childhood care and education on relevant, current research
that indicates how service provision could work to optimize child development.
The whole early childhood care and education system must be worked out in a
systematic way, with clear targets. It must be adapted to current conditions in order
to provide developmentally and educationally appropriate experiences, and match
the needs, provision and outcomes for children.
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It appears that systematic research may offer a new opportunity for sustainable
growth and balanced change in the early childhood care and educational system of
Greece ‘‘as it struggles to integrate with the global system while preserving those
salient elements of an old and remarkably enduring legacy’’ (Evangelou and
Dafermou 2005, p. 134). Serious research and its sustained scientific consideration
together with humanized policy decisions concerning infants and toddlers quality of
development within and out of the family context is a serious social and
psychological enterprise. There is a long road ahead of us if we are ever permitted to
achieve its fulfillment.
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