Alex Cohen
Quality Education
Published in
2 min readMar 18, 2021

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After reading through several recent scholarly articles regarding quality education, one source specifically stood out that shed light on the prospective success and failures at instituting quality education in America and the United Kingdom. Author Donald Simpson and various other renowned professors produced “Talking heresy about ‘quality’ early childhood education and care for children in poverty” to convey a well-rounded analysis of how early childhood education and care (ECEC) can generate both beneficial and adversarial effects. When initially thinking about implementing quality education in impoverished areas, it’s not immediately clear that any negatives would result from such a liberalized ideal. In fact, “It is believed that ECEC can contribute to improving children’s learning while reducing a gap in outcomes between children in poverty and their peers — ultimately promoting school readiness, education and social mobility”(Simpson et al., 2018, 4). In some sense, making improved education accessible to children living in poverty enhances their chances to move up the social ladder by substituting their lack of foundation with substantial knowledge and life skills. Especially if conventional curriculum standards focusing on preparing children for future literacy and problem-solving are administered, students will naturally have escalated chances for social mobility. In addition, the children would believe they actually have a chance at a better life if provided the opportunities and resources to achieve success, motivating them to put in the work necessary to reach these goals. But it’s crucial to acknowledge that just because these provisions are labeled “quality”, that doesn’t necessarily entail that the curriculums constitute valuable methods of relaying information. Nor does it promise these reformed systems will effectively teach children properly to boost them out of cyclic poverty. Even if the supposed quality systems are operating, “… there are doubts about how far education (including ECEC) can ‘compensate’ in this way for background and the effects of structural factors in society “(Simpson et al, 2018, 7). Given the circumstances behind impoverished communities, unsupportive home environments or a lack of physical materials can inhibit a child’s learning and competency. So in offering quality education, one of the fundamentals is knowing that it is only a step to improving standards for impoverished children. To ensure that quality ECEC fulfills its aptitude, additional services must be applied to enable impoverished children to utilize the new system to its fullest extent. Otherwise, society must accept that some disadvantaged children cannot reap the benefits of quality education because of their inherent limitations to succeed.

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