The Ministry of Education is responsible for the evaluation and monitoring of the whole educational system in Iceland, including public and private pre-schools. When ECEC services are outsourced to private preschools, municipali-ties have the responsibility to monitor that their services meet the required standards.
As mentioned earlier, the educational system in Iceland has been decentralized in terms of responsibilities and decision-making to the municipal level. Histori-cally, preschools have had much freedom to decide the content of their services.
However, with the implementation of the Preschool Act of 2008 and the national curriculum policy framework guide in 2011, national steering has become more transparent. Nevertheless, every preschool is responsible for writing its own curricula based on the 2011 national curriculum policy frame-work guide, thereby retaining some liberties within this frameframe-work.
According to the Preschool Act (90/2008), the aims of evaluation and quality control are as follows:
• To provide educational authorities, preschools staff, receiving schools, and parents with information on the education and care provided, their outcome, and development.
• To ensure that schools operate in compliance with the provisions of law, reg-ulations, and the National Curriculum Guide for Preschools.
• To increase the quality of the education and care provided in preschools and promote improvement
• To ensure that children’s rights are respected and that they receive the ser-vices to which they are legally entitled (Article 17, 90/2008).
Preschools are responsible for their internal evaluation, but the ministry and municipalities perform external evaluations. External evaluations can include evaluations of schools/institutions, internal evaluation methods, or other aspects of school activities. Since the establishment of the Directorate of Education in 2015, most aspects of the process belong under its auspices.
The main purpose of external school evaluations, apart from improving work quality, is to obtain an overall picture of each school’s activities or specific aspects at a given time. Attention is directed toward various features of the school’s activities, such as administration, development work, cooperation and communication within the school, study achievements, and communication between the school and parents and other acting parties outside the school.
ECEC employees must have appropriate education and training. The require-ment is that one in three staff members must have a higher education degree.
Municipalities are also required to hire specialists to provide counselling and support to children with disabilities in preschools.
Since 2000, Iceland has participated in the OECD PISA studies and, since 2009, the TALIS study. Iceland also takes part in OECD work on developing student achievement indicators, with the Icelandic educational system being regularly reviewed by OECD experts (Euyridice, 2019).
Conclusion
The main development of the ECEC sector shows a strong reliance on publicly provided ECEC services, although after 2000, there was an increase in private providers, a development whose trajectory is difficult to predict. Municipalities are the main players in providing these services, with relatively extensive autonomy. ECEC services are intended to facilitate parents’ labor market partic-ipation as well as secure the child’s well-being. The coverage is nearly uni-versal, and almost all children have experienced preschool attendance before the age of six. However, parents in Iceland need to bridge the gap between the end of parental leave until the child starts school, most often with paid family day care. There is considerable political and public support for ECEC, and it is con-sidered a natural part of a child’s education in society.
Table 6.1. Overview of ECEC regulation in Iceland
Regulation Iceland
Fee paid by parents No national regulations, but municipalities set fees for parents in the range from 10–25 percent of the operating costs of preschools.
Schemes for reduced
price? Not generally, but some municipalities have discounts for siblings, students, and low-income families.
Individual’s right to a
place According to legislation, there is no individual right to a place.
Municipalities commit themselves politically to provide places.
Quality regulations Through legislation and national curricula. One in three staff members in ECEC centers must have a higher education degree.
Level of funding of
private ECEC Funding of private preschools is on par with that of public preschools.
Form of funding of
private ECEC Publicly subsidized, but parental contributions are higher.
Supervision of private
entities Conducted by municipalities along with the Ministry of Education.
Limitation on profits? No, not according to the Preschool Act.
Right to Establish? Municipalities can decide to outsource ECEC services to private providers.
ECEC development in Iceland seems to have followed similar paths as in the other Nordic countries, although there were some dissimilarities. The main dif-ference was a slower development because of later industrialization and urbani-zation compared to the other Nordic countries. It is also clear that international standards from the OECD and the results of the PISA studies were somewhat influential in the discourse in policy documents, such as the national curricula.
Although there have been some scholarly disagreements about this, public debates involving politicians and parents have mainly involved waiting lists fol-lowing parental leave.
In general, there have not been many public or political debates on the chal-lenges of the ECEC sector, neither has the privatization of ECEC been high on the agenda in political or public debates. Very few Icelandic researchers have criticized the neoliberal changes evident in ECEC policies after 2008 and 2011.
Furthermore, hardly any research has been carried out on the privatization of ECEC, and there has been very limited political or public debate about the ECEC sector in general.