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even
all up in your face
May 17, 2017 09:25
7 yrs ago
78 viewers *
English term

Infant, Preschool or Early Childhood Education?

English Social Sciences Education / Pedagogy School stages
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.
Responses
4 +1 early childhood education
4 +1 Pre-primary
3 +2 Early Years
4 education of children from 2 to 6 years of age

Discussion

neilmac (asker) May 18, 2017:
CLARIFICATION 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 May 18, 2017:
@Charles 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 May 17, 2017:
@Barbara 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 May 17, 2017:
Formal education pre-primary 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 May 17, 2017:
Certainly must have been changes since my days 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 May 17, 2017:
When I was little 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 May 17, 2017:
Educación infantil in Spain 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 May 17, 2017:
Infant school and pre-school are not the same thing: infant school is ages four to seven.

Responses

+1
7 hrs
Selected

early childhood education

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.
Peer comment(s):
agree Björn Vrooman : Neat. Quote from the corresponding (and, I think, well-written) Wiki entry: "Infant/toddler education, a subset of early childhood education, denotes the education of children from birth to age two." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_childhood_education
1 hr
Thanks, Björn! "Infant" is best avoided here; it means different things in different places.
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thanks for everyone who contributed to this ongoing quandary :-)"
37 mins

education of children from 2 to 6 years of age

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."
Note from asker:
Interesting. I'll put this to the client/author and see what she thinks. Thanks for posting :)
Peer comment(s):
disagree Samuel Sebastian Holden Bramah : I disagree regarding the statement "This is a range that isn't covered by (British) categories of education.
2 hrs
So, you disagree with all the references above. My "pre-primary" school taught us reading, spelling, long division and multiplication!
agree philgoddard : What it's called in the UK is irrelevant. This is about Spain. Charles is right to point out that it's ages 0 to 6, but that wasn't your fault.
6 hrs
Thanks Phil
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+1
3 hrs

Pre-primary

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.
Reference:

https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=5409

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preschool

Peer comment(s):
agree Sheila Wilson
1 hr
agree acetran
3 hrs
disagree B D Finch : Primary school includes infants (5 - 7) and junior (7 - 11), while pre-school is kindergarten and playgroups. The type of provision and nature of activities also vary too much for either of those terms to be satisfactory here.
3 hrs
neutral philgoddard : Agree with BD - this is confusing.
3 hrs
neutral Charles Davis : NB. "Pre-primary" means from age 3 to primary (see your OECD source) but "infantil" includes 0-3
4 hrs
Something went wrong...
+2
10 hrs

Early Years

This is the term I hear most frequently in the UK. I've seen it a lot in education-related publications (I have a 2-year-old starting nursery soon so I've done lots of reading on it!)

I believe "ECE" and "preschool" are more commonly used in the US

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Note added at 10 hrs (2017-05-17 19:46:33 GMT)
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Just to add that the ages covered in educational systems in different countries won't line up exactly do you may have to note in your translation that it covers ages 2-6 rather than up to only age 5 in the UK

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Note added at 10 hrs (2017-05-17 19:56:12 GMT)
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https://www.gov.uk/early-years-foundation-stage

https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/explore-my-options/...
Reference:

https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/explore-my-options/become-an-early-years-teacher

Peer comment(s):
agree acetran
4 days
Thank you :)
agree Yvonne Gallagher : yes, what is used most often these days
5 days
Thank you :)
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