영유아 교육·보육 통계 통합 생산방안

Abstract

Korea has two tiered system of early childhood education and care (ECEC) with multiple authorities; each sector has generated its statistical data separately without a comprehensive plan in collecting and managing data, leading to a failure in responding to policy needs for various types of statistical data. Given that the integration of ECEC system is now underway and early childhood policy is expanding its coverage; it is crucial to produce ECEC statistical data altogether in order to support and formulate data-based policies. This research, therefore, aimed to propose measures to generate integrated statistical data by identifying the problems in current systems, especially with regard to multiple authorities, and analyzing the needs for the integrated data that policy makers demand. In this research, literature review was carried out regarding the current system for generating statistical data. A questionnaire survey was conducted to 133 professors, researchers and officials and a draft version of ECEC statistical indicator was developed in consideration of future increase of ECEC statistical data in line with their political use. Responding to the survey, the respondents revealed that they use the statistical data mostly for academic purposes and were in need of the data more than once a season. Majority of them use the data in forms of announced statistical charts and reports. The problems in using ECEC statistical data appeared to be the long cycles of data collection, insufficient amount of data, and difficulties in accessing to original sources. When data users make use of different types of data from both education and child care sectors together, differences in the time of statistical data generation and the indicators were reported as the predicaments, making it difficult to conduct comparison analysis. In sum, the findings demonstrated that ECEC statistical data needs to be produced together. To increase the availability, unifying the systems for data investigation and structuring connections between current information systems are recommended. Also this research proposes the way to generate integrated statistical data focusing on ECEC indicators. National statistics committee has to play a key role in planning ECEC statistical data and one-source system in accordance with actual users' demands. Lastly, periodical data collection needs to be conducted to develop new types of data.