3rd Global School Play Day - 1 February

Global School Play Day is taking place for the third time on 1 February 2017 raising awareess of the importance of unstructured play in life, especially in childrens'. In the introduction to the event its website calls the attention of educators to Peter Gray's TEDx lecture, that clearly argues the case that today's kids do not grow up playing and this has negatively impacted them in many ways. It's time we return the gift of play to this generation. The right to play and playful learning have been high up on parents' agenda in Europe and becoming a hot topic for parents all over the world. This is why we are happy to share this initiative and suggest you try to make your childrens' school to join. And why not also put more emphasis on play at home on the day?

Conference on the EU Pillar of Social Rights

The European Commission organised an high level conference following the adoption of a report on the European Pillar of Social Rights in Brussels on 23 January 2017. The event was designed to highlight the commitment of Jean-Claude Juncker to establishing the Social Pillar of the EU, or more precisely of the Euro Zone for the time being. Social Platform members, including EPA were invited, but were offered little space, for example there were only representatives of other social partners, employers and trade unions in the closing panel. However, the commitment was made absolutely clear by the fact that 9 EU Commissioners, Members of the European Parliament, leaders of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the Committee of Regions (CoR), UNESCO, OECD, the European Central Bank and several national ministers attended and contributed to the event that concluded with the first public speech by the new President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani and President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.

Survey on good practices and quality of Childcare Centres

A survey for parents and practitioners working at child care centres/nurseries is being held as part of a Erasmus+ project entitled "SEQUENCES – Self and external Evaluation of QUality in EUrope to Nourish Childhood Education Services" funded by the European Commission that EPA is a partner in. This project aims to respond to the need to improve the quality of ECEC services through the creation of evaluation tools. The survey ends on 15th March 2017. Please respond according to your knowledge and your own personal experience.Click the link to the different language versions to start the survey: 

English https://goo.gl/forms/F5A2a3CCcqatEWnf2
Italian: https://goo.gl/forms/WtCbEqVJy8amgcrj1
Romanian: https://goo.gl/forms/PZqmhCskzwEo5XtH2
Lithuanian: https://goo.gl/forms/c1hUZzcprR6KywGD3
Hungarian: https://goo.gl/forms/IJLj6Rye7qKlLWhF2
Serbian: https://goo.gl/forms/Qx5hT5ne0onTNRHX2
Slovenian:  https://goo.gl/forms/zeMVPUy0hgFyLqDp1

If you don't know the answer, give a 1 as you should know as a parent, if you cannot quote any good practices, just put an X there.