Infant, Preschool or Early Childhood Education?

English translation: early childhood education

09:25 May 17, 2017

English language (monolingual) [PRO]
Social Sciences - Education / Pedagogy / School stages

English term or phrase: Infant, Preschool or Early Childhood Education?

I'm currently translating an article about family diversity and preschool and primary school pupils. My doubt arises when I have to translate "Educación Infantil" in Spanish, which is literally "Infant Education". I know that when I went to school, many many years ago, the terms infant school/infant education were current, but I need to know the terms that are in use nowadays.
In the Spanish system, infant education corresponds to children from 2 to 6 years of age.
My doubt is whether to use "infant school", "preschool", or ECE (Early Childhood Education), which also seems to be "a thing" nowadays.
My target language is UK English, although I'd also like to know the current usage in the USA.

neilmac KudoZ activity Questions: 1872 (2 open) (106 closed without grading) Answers: 6254 Spain
Local time: 14:06

Selected answer:early childhood education

Explanation:
As I noted in the discussion area, the Spanish term for which you're trying to find the best equivalent in English, "Educación infantil", means education for children from birth to the age of 6, and it's divided into two "ciclos" or stages, 0-3 and 3-6. Here again is the Spanish government's web page explaining this (I hope non-Spanish-speaking colleagues will get the gist of it:
https://www.mecd.gob.es/educacion-mecd/en/areas-educacion/es...

Primary starts at 6 in Spain, so this is education before primary. (Primary starts at 5 in the UK and at 5 or 6 in the US, but that slight difference is not significant; they are functional equivalents.)

Logically this ought to be "pre-primary", but it isn't, because "pre-primary doesn't mean everything before primary, it means age 3 to primary. Ditto preschool.

I think the best thing to do is to use the internationally agreed terminology, the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), which is used by the OECD and many other supranational bodies and is recognised everywhere.

In the first ISCED (1997), the lowest level, Level 0, was called "Pre-primary education" and was "for children from age 3 to the start of primary education". So it was the second of the two stages of Spanish "Infantil". There was nothing below that in the classification.

However, in the revised ISCED (2011), Level 0 is now called "Early Childhood Education". It consists of Level 01, called "Early childhood educational development", which is "designed for children below the age of 3", and Level 02, still called "Pre-primary education", which is "designed for children from age 3 to the start of primary education".

So ISCED 2011 Level 01 is the same as ISCED 1997 Level 0. But ISCED 2011 Level 0 (Early Childhood Education) as a whole is exactly equivalent to Spanish "Educación Infantil". So that's what we should call it, in my opinion.

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Note added at 7 hrs (2017-05-17 17:11:18 GMT)
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On ISCED:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Classif...

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Note added at 7 hrs (2017-05-17 17:12:18 GMT)
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Oh dear. In the last paragraph I meant "ISCED 2011 Level 02 is the same as ISCED 1997 Level 0.

Selected response from:

Charles Davis
Spain
Local time: 14:06

Grading comment

Thanks for everyone who contributed to this ongoing quandary :-)
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED

4 +1

Pre-primary

Samuel Sebastian Holden Bramah

4 +1

early childhood education

Charles Davis

3 +2

Early Years

Jessie LN

education of children from 2 to 6 years of age

B D Finch

Discussion entries: 8

neilmac

Spain

ASKER

CLARIFICATION

11:10 May 18, 2017

The statement "In the Spanish system, infant education corresponds to children from 2 to 6 years of age" was from an online source, I don't recall which now, but please don't shoot the messenger. The discussion so far is interesting, and I'm just about to post a related query in ES-EN, while hoping to dodge any further slings and arrows.

B D Finch

France

@Charles

08:44 May 18, 2017

Thanks Charles. Unfortunately, my education went downhill from then on. ;) Junior school was very ordinary and conventional and I tuned out when made to do dull lessons in stuff I'd done in an enjoyable way in infant school.

Charles Davis

Spain

@Barbara

19:22 May 17, 2017

Thank you for that entertaining and rather moving reminiscence. If only everyone's early (and indeed later) education were so inspiring. My experience at infants school was very different.

B D Finch

France

Formal education pre-primary

15:30 May 17, 2017

When I went to a British infants school, aged 3, even longer ago than Sheila went to kindergarten, we very definitely had a formal education. There were three classes and the teacher gave you a note to take to the teacher in the next class when you were considered ready to join it. We learned reading, writing, spelling, drawing, painting, singing, dancing, nature study (watching the hens laying eggs in the orchard) and arithmetic. In the top class, we learned long division and long multiplication. Our musical education included the headmaster singing Kathleen Ferrier songs to us from the dias at one end of the large room where the youngest children had their class. I still remember sitting on the floor amazed that an adult would do something that wonderful just for us kids.

When some of us discovered a Roman milestone under a bush, the headmaster came down to give a special lesson about Roman numerals, to the middle and top classes, which I still remember. (To squeeze the middle class into our classroom, we rearranged all the desks and sat on them.) He got us to try doing long division with Roman numerals in order to demonstrate the importance of the zero and Arabic numerals.

Sheila Wilson

Spain

Certainly must have been changes since my days

14:18 May 17, 2017

I went to kindergarten in the UK in, ahem, 1959. I have the impression that it was only called that in private schools, but I'm not sure. "Pre-primary" seems to me too to be the safest blanket term for today.
Interesting question. I know you can't have exact translations, but we do nevertheless need to translate such concepts.

Samuel Sebastian Holden Bramah

Spain

When I was little

12:44 May 17, 2017

All this was fields... No, seriously, in Spain we called it "Guardería" and it was where we went from 2 to 6 (or 3 to 6 or 4 to 6), basically so that our mums could work and we could be "kept" somewhere. I remember my mother calling it "play-school" and several of her peers saying "Kindergarten", but that was an eclectic mix of mothers from all over the place. My mother is British (very British). This, of course, was 30-odd years ago, and of course, everything changes. I would go with "pre-primary", which is kind of a good "blanket" term for anything before formal education is started with "Primary" per se.

Charles Davis

Spain

Educación infantil in Spain

10:38 May 17, 2017

It's not 2-6, it's 0-6. It's divided into two "cycles" (stages), 0-3 and 3-6.
https://www.mecd.gob.es/educacion-mecd/areas-educacion/estud...

0-3 (or thereabouts) is I think called infant/toddler education in the US. I don't think it's regarded as an educational stage in the UK.
Pre-school in OECD international language means 3 to primary.
Pre-primary is used in that sense too.
I don't think it matters whether primary begins at 5 as in the UK or at 6 as in Spain; the same term can be used.
ECE can go up to 8 in some definitions.

Lucy Hill

United Kingdom

09:29 May 17, 2017

Infant school and pre-school are not the same thing: infant school is ages four to seven.

Answers

37 mins confidence:

infant, preschool or early childhood education? education of children from 2 to 6 years of age

Explanation:
You tell us that "In the Spanish system, infant education corresponds to children from 2 to 6 years of age." That is a range that isn't covered by any of the British categories of education. The difference between education of 2-year-olds and of 4-year-olds is too great to try to squeeze this into "infant school". So, I'd avoid seeking any equivalent and simply give the age-range in question.

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Note added at 1 hr (2017-05-17 11:04:29 GMT)
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http://www.theeducationwebsite.co.uk/index.php?page=preschoo...
"Your child is able to have a formal education from the age of 3 onwards by attending a nursery. Most nurseries are privately owned and run, but increasingly more and more state primary schools are adding a nursery facility onto their school site. This encourages continuity for your child, so that s/he may be on the same site between the ages of 3 and 11. The nursery years (ages 3 to 4) are sometimes called Foundation. There is no legal obligation for children to attend nurseries or school until they reach 5, but many working parents find that a nursery is an ideal place for their children to go to whilst they are at work. Some children may attend nursery for just one or two days a week at first, before attending for longer periods once they have settled in."

http://www.theeducationwebsite.co.uk/index.php?page=primary
"Primary schools admit children from the ages of 5 through to 11. Some primary schools are split up into Infant and Junior levels. These are usually separate schools on the same site. The infant age range (Key Stage 1) is from age 5 to 7. The Junior age range (Key Stage 2) is from age 7 to 11."

Here, nursery is from 2 years:

https://www.thecobbs.org.uk/warrington/primary/thecobbs/site...
"The School has a Nursery Unit, with provision for two year olds, and 5 sessions per week (morning or afternoon) are provided free of charge from the Government."

Clearly it isn't a grammar school: "free of charge from [sic] the Government".

https://www.babycentre.co.uk/a537554/day-nurseries
"A day nursery is a childcare centre that looks after children from birth to five years, though the exact age ranges vary from nursery to nursery. Some nurseries don't take babies or young toddlers, or they may only take children up to four years old."

B D Finch
France
Local time: 14:06
Works in field
Native speaker of: English
PRO pts in category: 12

Notes to answerer

Asker: Interesting. I'll put this to the client/author and see what she thinks. Thanks for posting :)

3 hrs confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

infant, preschool or early childhood education? Pre-primary

Explanation:
I have used, as both a translator (working on Education/Pedagogy texts) and as head of studies of a language school working with all age ranges, the terms "pre-primary" and "pre-school" on numerous occasions.

https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=5409
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preschool

Samuel Sebastian Holden Bramah
Spain
Local time: 14:06
Works in field
Native speaker of:

Spanish,