Differences in daycare between Finland and Netherlands

This is based on only my own personal experience, so you shouldn't take everything I say for a fact. My host's collague asked me to come tell her class about the differences between our countries, so here I am now writing this :)

Differences in daycare between Netherlands and Finland

Children's ages

In Netherlands, children go to school much earlier than in Finland. In Finland, children go to pre-school at age of 6 years old and to school at 7 years old. Here in Netherlands, children go to school when they are 4 years old. This is one of the biggest differences I have found. I don't know about the school in here, so I don't know how the difference actually shows, or does it. Also, in Netherlands children start the daycare much earlier, but more about that in the next chapter.

Maternal leave & starting in a daycare centre

In Finland we have Kela (social insurance institution of Finland). In their website they tell about maternity leave:

You can take a maternity leave 30-50 working days or about 5-8 weeks before your expected due date. The maternity allowance is paid for 105 working days, i.e., for about 4 months.

In Netherlands the time is 16 weeks total so the maternity leave ends when the baby is about 10 weeks old.. So the maternity leave in Netherlands is much less than in Finland.

What about fathers then? Kela says this:

Paternity allowance during the paternity leave

Fathers can take paternity leave after the birth of their child. The paternity leave can last up to 54 working days or about 9 weeks. During this period, both parents can stay at home at the same time for up to 18 working days.

In Netherlands, father can stay at home for two days. So there is one huge difference.

You might think this is it, right? Nope! In Finland we have two more things after maternity/paternity leave. There is parental leave and child care leave.

And again taken from Kela's website:

Parental leave

The parental leave begins after the maternity leave. The child will be about 3 months old at this time. Parents can agree between themselves how to use the parental leave entitlement. During the parental leave, Kela pays parental allowance for 158 working days (a little over half a year).

and

Child care leave

Your child will be about 9 months old when your parental leave ends. After that, either parent can stay at home on an unpaid child care leave until your child is 3 years old. The child care leave is granted by the employer. A partial or part-time child care leave is possible as well.

 and even though child care leave is unpaid, Kela still helps you with that:

Claim child care allowances

If your child does not attend day care arranged by the municipality, you can get financial assistance from Kela depending on your child care arrangements. .

and there are three different options for that:

Child home care allowance

If a father or mother takes care of a child under 3 years old at home, the parent can claim child home care allowance. The caregiver can also be someone else, such as a grandparent or a private day care provider.

Private day care allowance

Private day care allowance can be granted to families with a child under school age who is looked after by a private day care provider or by a caregiver the family have hired.

Flexible care allowance

The mother or father of a child under 3 years of age can get a flexible care allowance from Kela if he or she works no more than 30 hours per week on average.

So in Finland, child might be already 3 years old before even going to daycare. And if there's more than one child in the family, the first place child goes after home might be the pre-school. For example I was never in daycare centre, because I had younger siblings and my mom stayed at home with us. So I find this probably the most huge difference comparing the differences between Finland and Netherlands.

The youngest child in daycare I've ever seen, has been 9 months old. Here it's usual to have 3 months old babies in a daycare, which was very different for me.

Staff

I'm not completely sure about how many children there can be per one adult in daycare in Netherlands, but I'm going to tell how it is in Finland.

In a group of children ages 0-3 years old, there can be 4 full-time children per one employee. In one group there can be only the amount of children, that three employees can have, so a basic group of this age is 12 children and 3 employees.

In ages 3-5 years old, there can be 7 children per one employee and also maximum of three times that, so 21 children of full-time care.

There can be smaller groups and there can be bigger groups. Bigger groups can only be, if at least some of the children are not there everyday or otherwise not full hours. There's also rules about children with special needs etc.

In one group there's usually working one kindergarten teacher and two practical nurses or for example children’s instructors. Many daycare centres however prefer practical nurses, because of their education. The reason is found in the next chapter:

Giving medicine to the children

I've learned that here in Netherlands you can give paracetamol for the children if they're ill. In Finland employees can only give medicine which is prescripted by a doctor. The employee also needs to have education for giving medicine. For example, the teacher of the group can't give medicine, because their education - even though it is a higher than practical nurses education - doesn't include medical education. So un-educated employees can't give any medicine, not even drops for eye infection or anything. . Giving any medicine, there's always some paper work and you have to write down everything etc. So in Finland rules are more strict about this.

Eating, sleeping, playing...

In eating there are some differences. And I've understood that also in Netherland there can be huge differences between different daycare centres. In Finland I haven't really seen differences between daycare centres, but on the other hand Í have only experience from one town and they all have the food from the same kitchen... And the same food also goes to schools for example. And it's quite usual in Finland, that the daycare centres have the same food that in schools. I googled and found some pictures of the school food:

Small children probably won't eat so much, but as you can see from the pictures, there is warm food, salad, milk and bread. In the daycare centre I worked here in Netherlands, there's only the warm food and water, and the water is given before the lunch. In Finland children usually get everything at the same time.
For breakfast in Finland there's usually porridge and bread, here the breakfast is fruits.

Other difference that I've found, is going out. In Finland the children go out twice a day, usually even if it's raining. I've heard that here the children are supposed to go out once a day, but at least what I've seen, that doesn't really happen every day.

Other things I find pretty similar. Of course there's much more differences, but I think the rest depends on the daycare centre and not really the country.

The law

I don't really know about the law or things like that here in Netherlands, but in Finland we have a law about early childhood education. We also have a National curriculum guidlines on early childhood education and care in Finland. This document tells what needs to be in a municipal plan for early childhood education and care, which tells what has to be in a daycare's own plan. We also have plan for each child, where we put their personal goals and stuff like that. Someone could write a lot about all of this, but I won't do that now. I am just telling that in Finland we have these kind of documents that guides the ways we practice daycare in Finland.