Abstract
This paper evaluated, by focusing on Finland, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) system in Europe, which has been promoting high-quality ECEC to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs), and discussed institutional reforms over a period of 30 years from the 1970s. The materials used in this research were based on Finnish literature, showing that the Finnish childcare system was formally established by introducing the Act on Children’s Day Care in the 1970s. However, confusion arose in the ECEC community after the government guidelines emphasized early childhood education in the 1980s. When this undesirable outcome was recognized in the 1990s, an effort was made to return to a more ideal, children-centered education and care. ECEC has been related to pre-primary education since 1986, and as a result of the curriculum development based on the information steering policy in Finland, the national core curricula for ECEC and pre-primary education were implemented in the 2000s, leading to the development of continuous education from ECEC to elementary schools.
