Comparative Data on public Spending on ECEC Services? 7th Meeting of the OECD Network on ECEC Financing ECEC services Senior adviser Marit R. Solheim

Data collection on public spending Norway - an integrated system The most critical gap: Norwegian official data is not collected and broken down in the same way as the OECD statistics National data on public spending is not comparable with other countries In Norway we have an integrated system which means that we do not separate our data collection into childcare and pre-primary education. When using data from OECD statistics this is a big problem. Starting Strong II has a very good illustration of this problem. National data on public spending is not comparable with other countries. I can see why we are trying to get better data for ECEC services.

An example - data on operating expenses Operating expenses not separated by children's age care and education in Norwegian national data collection Statistics Norway has to estimate these numbers when reporting to the OECD Education Database I just want to give you an example on how we collect data in Norway. When it comes to operating expenses og operating costs, we get data from all “barnehager” independent of ownership. But in the data collection we don’t separate costs after children's age or if its education or care. The last has no meaning in our system. Statistics Norway has to estimate these numbers when reporting to the OECD Education Database

What do the numbers on public spending not tell us? Early childhood education ?(care) Early childcare 3-5 years 0-3 years All the boxes represent the total of public spending for ECEC-services The normal way to spilt these numbers in different kind of statistics is to divide services into 0-3 years and 3-5 years. Then we split the services for 3-5 year old into education and care In my illustration the box called ”early childhood education” is what we report to OECD and is used in Education at a Glance. As I can see, what we are trying today is to build a system which shows the hole picture of costs regarding ECEC-services. ( both operating expenses, subsidies to private institutions and parents) Are the definitions of all this different kind of costs and tranfers been set? Are we trying to put to much into the comparisons?

What kind of data do Norway (and other countries with integrated systems) need? Data on public spending that makes it possible to put together “blocks” We can ”build” an ”take apart” Is this possible? Norway need data that makes it possible for us make comparisons with countries that is useful for us. Is it possible to put together countries in groups were we can have different kind of measurements that we can put together and take apart? I think about opreating cost per child, total of public spending and so on. Is this possible?