A story of back and forth: the changes in the role of the state and the institutional fragmentation in early childhood education in Chile (1960-2020)

Abstract

During the last decades, early childhood education in Chile has been marked by back-and forth policymaking- between the fragmentation of the system and the attempts to regulate and standardize it. This has gainedmstrength in recent years, from the creation of the “Quality Assurance System” and of the Under secretariat and Intendancy of Early Childhood Education. This article seeks to understand the way in which early childhood education institutionality, the state, and public policies have been configured and transformed between the years 1960 and 2020. The study was based on documentary analysis (over 200), complemented with nine interviews of actors who have participated in the design or execution of these public policies during the last decades. The results of the study show the existence of four historical phases in which there is a permanent back and forth between the regulation and deregulation of the still fragmented early childhood education system.