On Thursday and Friday, at the EU conference on Diversity and Multilingualism in Early Childhood Education and Care in Luxembourg, Luxembourg Minister for Education, Children and Youth, Claude Meisch, delivered the Opening speech and stressed the need to increase the number of childcare places for young children, while improving the quality of the structures.

Corinne Cahen, Luxembourg's Minister for Family and Integration, reiterated the importance, as well as the potential of integration through language. She gave the example of refugees who arrived in Luxembourg a year ago, and now speak French, German and Luxembourgish.

Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, emphasised the need to invest in quality education from an early age, because in a world where social inequalities are increasing, it is the best protection against social exclusion.

The early childhood education and care sector in Europe is currently in transition. Not only are European countries expanding the number of places available (increasing access) in order to allow parents to better combine private and family life, but they are also paying greater attention to the quality of ECEC. The importance of the early years for further learning processes, as well as for educational and social inclusion, is more and more widely recognised, thus strengthening the importance of good quality services.

This is demonstrated by developments at both national level – such as the implementation of new frameworks or standards – and European level, through cooperation aimed at supporting Member States in this area: within the Education and Training 2020 strategic framework, a Thematic Working Group under the auspices of the European Commission has worked to produce a proposal for a "Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care”. The document was presented and broadly welcomed during a conference in Athens in 2014.

The understanding of each child as a unique and competent learner, who needs to be encouraged, supported and actively involved in his/her own learning process, is now widely shared.

Especially at a time when countries face important challenges relating to the social, cultural and linguistic diversity of their populations, quality in this respect also means taking into consideration the individual starting points and situations of all children in order to provide them with the best possible support in realising their potential.

The daily reality in ECEC settings shows that the efforts to meet these challenges require specific knowledge as well as the questioning of established perception and practices, and that they pose pedagogic and organisational challenges to structures and authorities in this field.

Against this backdrop, one aim of the conference “Diversity and Multilingualism in Early Childhood Education and Care” was to consider the various aspects of the proposal for a Quality Framework with a particular emphasis on the possible ways to support the language development of children in multilingual contexts and to value and respect the diversity of children and their families.

The conference started with a session of introductory key-note speeches. During the first afternoon, participants were divided into five working groups covering the different dimensions of the quality framework:

• Curriculum
• Access
• Workforce
• Governance and funding
• Monitoring and evaluation

On the second day, the main messages arising from these working groups was presented to all participants and the way forward was discussed by European experts and researchers. The conclusions of the conference will be presented to the Education Ministers during the Council meeting in November.