Early childhood education and care plan

The early childhood education plan is a pedagogical handbook for everyone working in early childhood education: it guides and supports all work in early childhood education. The plan includes the main objectives and contents of early childhood education.

In municipal early childhood education in Espoo, we follow the city's own early childhood education plan. It includes the national core curriculum for ECEC issued by the Finnish National Agency for Education and Espoo’s own municipality-specific policies and emphases.

All outsourced day-care centres and service voucher day-care centres in Espoo observe the city’s own early childhood education plan.

Most other private service providers also follow the early childhood education plan of the City of Espoo. Some private operators may have their own local early childhood education plan that the city has approved.

The ECEC plan currently in use has been introduced in Espoo on 1 August 2022.

If you wish, you can learn more about Espoo's Finnish and Swedish early childhood education plans at the bottom of the page. More information about the ECEC plan of Finnish early childhood education is available here.

We also make a personal early childhood education plan for each child going to a day-care centre, family day care or group family day care. It is based on the Act on Early Childhood Education. According to legislation, a child attending early childhood education and care is entitled to receive systematic and goal-oriented education, tuition and care.

We prepare the child's early childhood education plan in cooperation with the child's parents when the child starts in early childhood education. For this purpose, the guardians are invited to an ECEC discussion, on the basis of which the child's personal ECEC plan is drawn up. The progress of the child's learning and growth is discussed.

Together with the guardians, we discuss matters such as the child's strengths, interests, skills and individual needs. During the ECEC discussion, the objectives and measures supporting the child’s development, learning and well-being are recorded in the child’s ECEC plan. We also survey the child’s wishes and take them into account in the preparation of the plan.

The issues of the ECEC plan become concrete from the perspective of your child. In preparing it, the child's own opinion, the observations of the early childhood education staff and the views of the guardians are taken into account.

Together with the guardians, we will evaluate the realisation of the plan at least once a year in the child's ECEC discussion. If necessary, the plan is reviewed.