Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe: Tackling Social and Cultural Inequalities. Lithuania

Overview & Synopsis

In Lithuania early childhood education and care embraces children of the age from one to seven and is an integrated part of the education system. According to Lithuanian education classification, it belongs to the zero level of education. Though defined as pre-school education yet this stage is composed of two parts--pre-school education of children of the age from one to five or six, and pre-primary education of children from five or six to seven years old. Each of these two parts serves a different purpose. The purpose of pre-school education is to help children satisfy their inherent, cultural, ethnic, social, and cognitive needs. The purpose of pre-primary education is to help children prepare for successful schooling according to the curriculum of primary education. This paper contains the following parts: (1) Early childhood education accessibility and quality; (2) Funding; and (3) Monitoring. [For the complete report, see ED539138.]