Higher share of children in kindergarten

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In 2016, 91 per cent of all children aged 1-5 attended kindergarten.

In total, 282 600 children attended kindergarten at the end of 2016; a decrease of 959 children from 2015. The proportion of children aged 1-5 who attended kindergarten in 2016 was 91 per cent, which is an increase of 0.6 percentage points compared with 2015. About 82 per cent of children aged 1-2 and 97 per cent of children aged 3-5 attended kindergarten in 2016.

Figure 1. Percentage of children age 1-5 in kindergarten

Percentage of children age 1-5 in kindergarten
2000 62.0
2001 63.3
2002 65.9
2003 69.1
2004 72.2
2005 76.2
2006 80.4
2007 84.3
2008 87.2
2009 88.5
2010 89.3
2011 89.7
2012 90.1
2013 90.0
2014 90.2
2015 90.4

Growing number of children from linguistic and cultural minorities

In 2016, there were 46 000 children from linguistic and cultural minorities in kindergarten; an increase of seven per cent from 2015.

Figure 2. Children from linguistic and cultural minorities in kindergarten, as a percentage of all children in kindergarten age 1-5

Children from linguistic and cultural minorities in kindergarten, as a percentage of all children in kindergarten age 1-5
2005 6.2
2006 6.7
2007 7.6
2008 8.5
2009 9.3
2010 9.9
2011 10.8
2012 12.0
2013 13.2
2014 14.4
2015 15.3

Nine per cent of employees were men

In 2016, nine per cent of employees in primary functions were men, which is the same as the previous year. There were 3 300 male assistants in 2016, which was 11.5 per cent of all assistants in kindergartens. Eight per cent of all educational leaders and eight per cent of all leaders in kindergartens were male.

Employees’ educational background

Ninety-one per cent of all directors and educational leaders had approved pre-school teacher education in 2016. Due to changes in the collection of educational background that were introduced in 2016, the figures are not directly comparable with previous years.

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