Importance of OSC on the policy agenda

• Author: Ludwinek, Anna; Clevers, Franziska
• Pages: 6-10

6

Chapter 1 highlighted the lack of comprehensive and

comparative research in the area of OSC that

specifically focuses on the relationship between the

availability and provision of OSC and work–life balance.

This chapter examines in greater detail why OSC should

be on the policy agenda and reflects if and to what

extent different stakeholders at the national level are

engaging with the topic and are driving developments in

this area. The chapter is structured in two parts.

The first part of this chapter looks at the relationship

between the working lives of parents (with children

aged 6–12) and the average weekly hours of formal

childcare, including compulsory school hours, for pupils

aged 6–12. The incompatibility between the hours that

parents spend at work and the hours their children

spend at school is clear evidence of the need for OSC

services. In other words, availability of OSC is essential

for promoting full-time employment for parents and can

be seen as a key facilitator in helping to balance work

with private life for parents in full-time employment.

The main data used to examine the relationship

between the hours that parents spend at work and the

hours children spend at school are from EWCS 2015 for

working hours and EU-SILC 2016 for compulsory

childcare hours for children aged 6–12. There are three

main reasons for using these two datasets.

£Harmonised, comparative data on the provision

and the use of OSC in the EU are not available.

£The education systems and schooling hours for

different ages vary significantly between countries,

making the comparisons challenging.

£There is little merit in examining the formal,

statutory working hours of employees as, in

practice, major differences exist between the public

and private sectors, statutory and actual working

hours and working schedules, and these differences

are further complicated by part-time working

arrangements.

The issues outlined above mean that any direct

comparison of national data is not useful for the

purpose of this study. Instead, this report considers only

the parents of school-age children and compares their

actual weekly working hours against weekly childcare

hours.6

The second part of the chapter focuses on policy

discourse (information on whether and in what way the

OSC has been a topic in the policy debate since 2010),

including the main drivers behind national debates, the

main stakeholders involved and the main groups that

OSC is targeting.

Working hours vs schooling hours

Examining the average weekly working hours of parents

and the average weekly hours that children are in

school can help to demonstrate the gap between the

two schedules.

Figure 1 demonstrates the incompatibility between

employment and schooling hours (it is not intended to

show the quantitative disparity). The EU-SILC 2016 data

show the average weekly hours of formal childcare,

including compulsory school hours, for pupils aged

6–12 years old. Comparing these results with EWCS 2015

data on the average weekly working hours of couples

whose youngest child is 7–12 years old highlights the

mismatch between timetables. Although specific

timetables vary among countries, in general parents are

contracted to work longer hours than structured

education (schools) or care services (OSC) cover.

Figure 1 highlights big variations among countries.

There seems to be a large discrepancy between OSC

and working hours in many of the central and eastern

European countries, with the most pronounced gaps

recorded in Romania, Slovakia and Croatia. Notable

gaps can also be observed in Estonia, Lithuania,

Finland, Czechia and Greece. On the other end of the

spectrum, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands seem

to have found a better balance between the two

schedules, while only minor gaps are apparent in Italy,

Luxembourg and Portugal.

However, one has to treat this information with caution:

although some countries, such as the UK, may seem to

have a small gap between the working hours of parents

and OSC, costs may be acting as a barrier to accessing

OSC services; in many countries, there are other cultural

factors that may influence the usage and the provision

of OSC; finally, the quality of the OSC available may also

play a role in the take-up of childcare services.

2 Importance of OSC on the policy

agenda

6For the purpose of the report, the national correspondents were asked how many hours children spend in school, but the data are neither consistent nor

comparable.