Government program | The government program promises improvements to early childhood education, but no more money has been promised for the activities

Early childhood education teacher Saara Heikkilä is relieved when he hears that the first day of sick leave will remain paid for early childhood education teachers, at least for the time being.

“That would be a really bad thing in this kind of environment. We are here with the children, with whom we are just practicing hygiene,” says Heikkilä, who works in Koskela, Helsinki.

Children get sick often. Especially after the worst corona times, there were a lot of different infections circulating among people, and at least in Helsinki, kindergarten workers accumulated more sick leave than before.

Now the new government plans to make the employee’s first day of sick leave unpaid. However, in many collective agreements, the day’s pay is stipulated, and this is also the case in the contracts of early childhood education employees.

When the current labor and service collective agreements eventually expire, the employer can, of course, bring the first day’s unemployment to the negotiation table.

Information therefore, Heikkilä is happy about the sick leave, but otherwise she says that she is worried about what the entries in the government program mean for early childhood education.

“Yes, it has a lot of good points about how to improve early childhood education. But I’m skeptical that there will actually be a change,” says Heikkilä.

According to Heikkilä, the absolute biggest problem with daycare centers at the moment is that there are too few employees. The labor shortage in early childhood education has worsened rapidly, especially in the capital region, which has also been widely reported by HS.

Previous Minister of Science and Culture Petri Honkonen (Kesk) convened the actors of the early childhood education sector in October to an emergency meeting. The leaders of the capital region held their own later in the fall their press conferencein which they gave the government the towel, especially for not increasing enough places to start higher education in early childhood education.

Size during the time that the crisis has been talked about, all the parties have agreed that there is a need to increase the number of starting positions, and the attractiveness of the sector must be increased anyway.

The government program has adopted this goal: it outlines that at least 1,400 new early childhood education teachers must be trained every year.

However, it is clear from the annexes of the program that, at least at this stage, no additional funding has been planned for the task.

Instead, the state funding of higher education institutions is to be reduced. The reduction is intended to be made up by raising additional income with tuition fees for students from outside the EU and EEA countries and fees for open education. With these measures, the state economy would be strengthened by 30 million euros in 2027, which means that less money would go to higher education institutions from the state coffers.

In the government program, it has been agreed that just under one billion euros will be set aside for tki investments (research, development and innovation activities) at the level of 2027. A significant part of this amount will very likely be allocated to higher education institutions.

The one who led the parliamentary tki group Matias Mäkynen (sd), however, this money cannot be allocated to early childhood education teacher positions, but the money must be used for research in universities.

In the new the government program outlines several goals to improve early childhood education.

We want to increase the participation rate of children over 3 years old, and especially immigrant children. According to the program, learning support must be offered “individually and according to the child’s needs”. We want to strengthen the position of sign language children in early childhood education and basic education.

The government also promises to commit to the child’s right according to the law, that early childhood education is “pedagogically managed and implemented”. The allocation level for gender equality funding is planned to be established. For the years 2022–2023, equality money was distributed for a total of 28 million euros.

Saara Heikkilä, for example, considers the goal of increasing the participation rate of immigrant children to be a very good thing in terms of the integration of children and their families.

“But it would require more resources so that we could really help those children and families.”

However, no additional money allocated to early childhood education can be found in the records and tables of the government program. In addition, the government cuts the index increases of municipalities’ state shares by one percentage point for the duration of the election period. This is estimated to save 298 million euros over the next four years.

It is up to the municipalities to decide where they plan to save the necessary amount. However, after the Social Security reform, by far the largest spending items of the municipalities are education and training. Within them, the biggest item of expenditure is personnel costs.

An additional amount of 480 million euros has been separately earmarked for basic education during the election period.

In the government program the poor workforce situation in early childhood education is also noted. The program promises that the industry’s attraction and retention power will be strengthened by developing working conditions and the quality of early childhood education.

According to Heikkilä, both the quality of early childhood education and the working conditions are most affected by the number of adults compared to the number of children.

“When there are not enough staff, people are really stressed and overwhelmed. At least I personally don’t feel that any early childhood education plans would come to fruition when the whole day is spent trying to keep the children safe, making sure they have food and clean and dry clothes.”

According to Heikkilä, the too small number of adults is at the same time the worst factor that eats away at the industry’s attractiveness.

“When the students come to do an internship, no one necessarily has time to give them proper guidance, and they see how burned out the people there are. Many decide to change direction at that point.”

Generally it is thought that salary increases are an essential way to increase the attractiveness of a field.

The board program also contains an entry regarding salary increases. The government wants to strengthen the export-led labor market model, and it plans to amend the law, according to which the so-called general line in labor disputes cannot be crossed with a settlement proposal issued by the national mediator’s office or the mediation board.

The export-led labor market model means that export sectors important to the Finnish economy open a round of negotiations and determine the level of wage increases. In practice, the government’s registration would mean that other sectors would have to settle for what the export sectors get at most.

This would mean that it would be even more difficult for other sectors – such as early childhood education teachers – to improve their salary level in relation to the general salary level through collective bargaining.

Collective agreements of course only determine the minimum wage, and employers can also pay more. For example Vantaa just decided to increase the salary of early childhood education teachers by around 300 euros per month and the salary of nannies by around 150 euros per month.

Cities and municipalities are therefore free to compete for kindergarten workers on wages within the limits of their own financial situation.

However, Heikkilä says that the more important thing for him than salary increases is that there should be peace of mind at work and that the work should be carried out as well as possible.

“The early childhood education curriculum has quite a lot of everything we should do. When we don’t have time to do everything, it can make us feel inadequate, and it’s not good for self-esteem or motivation. That’s also why many young employees burn out.”