\ Education has produced a guide designed for local administrations that have to tender their early childhood services.
\ It gives ideas on the development of the tendering process for the public management of early childhood services and has been drawn up by a multidisciplinary team that includes professionals from contracting and schools.
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Guide to tendering the management of nursery schools
The Councillor for Education and Vocational Training, Martí March, accompanied by the Councillor for Finance and External Relations, Rosario Sánchez, and the President of the FELIB, Antoni Salas, presented the Guide for the preparation of specifications for the awarding of contracts for the management of municipal early childhood services in the Balearic Islands.
The event, which took place at the headquarters of the FELIB, was aimed at the contracting technicians of the local councils of the Islands. This guide is designed to provide local administrations with a series of reflections and experiences on the public management of early childhood services, and their contracting and to address aspects that form part of the decision-making sphere of local administrations.
This publication will be particularly useful for local councils that are in the process of building new schools and have to design and tender the service for the first time, but also for those that already have a school in place and want to improve and diversify the operation. Managing any service involves organising human, material and economic resources so that the service is provided correctly and efficiently.
In this sense, Councillor Rosario Sánchez highlighted the technical collaboration of the Ministry of Finance and External Relations in the preparation of the guide to facilitate administrative procedures for local councils and promote the implementation of 0-3 centres in all municipalities on the island “because with this we provide answers to families with accessible, quality education, and we are making progress in equality, which is a key objective for this Government”.
The councillor Martí March, for his part, highlighted the fundamental role of local administrations in promoting 0-3 education. “I would like to thank everyone for their efforts, especially the smaller municipalities, which often do not have the administrative structure necessary to set up a school. This guide has been written with them in mind, with the aim of helping them because their success will be everyone’s success”.
The particularities of each local administration make it difficult to develop a standard model of tender specifications for municipal early childhood education services. The Guide has been prepared by professionals in the public procurement sector with a long history and experience and has tried to take into account the needs and difficulties encountered by local administrations when designing and implementing an early childhood education service.
The importance of early years education
Since 2015, a clear commitment has been made to give 0-3 education the importance it deserves and therefore work has been done to promote the consolidation of an educational structure with the appropriate conditions for this educational level.
In order to make this possible, work has been carried out along several lines that attempt to cover all aspects, from purely pedagogical to those related to administrative or management issues. Thus, a large investment has been made to increase the number of nursery schools, to favour the transformation of nursery schools into infant education centres and to improve the maintenance of existing classrooms. Different measures have also been promoted to favour equity in the first cycle of infant education, such as canteen subsidies, which have included these pupils, schooling subsidies, subsidies for severely affected SEN pupils and pedagogical support in the centres with the expansion and consolidation of the Early Attention Teams (EAP).
This academic year 2022-2023 a significant step has been taken towards the universalisation of 0-3 education, with free education in the third year of infant education in both public centres and those in the complementary network.
The particularities of each local administration make it difficult to develop a standard model of tender specifications for municipal early childhood education services. The Guide has been prepared by professionals in the public procurement sector with a long history and experience, and has tried to take into account the needs and difficulties encountered by local administrations when designing and implementing an early childhood education service.
The importance of early years education
Since 2015, a clear commitment has been made to give 0-3 education the importance it deserves and therefore work has been done to promote the consolidation of an educational structure with the appropriate conditions for this educational level.
In order to make this possible, work has been carried out along several lines that attempt to cover all aspects, from the purely pedagogical to those related to administrative or management issues. Thus, a large investment has been made to increase the number of nursery schools, to favour the transformation of nursery schools into infant education centres and to improve the maintenance of existing classrooms. Different measures have also been promoted to favour equity in the first cycle of infant education, such as canteen subsidies, which have included these pupils, schooling subsidies, subsidies for severely affected SEN pupils and pedagogical support in the centres with the expansion and consolidation of the Early Attention Teams (EAP).
This academic year 2022-2023 a significant step has been taken towards the universalisation of 0-3 education, with free education in the third year of infant education in both public centres and those in the complementary network.