Entering a Spanish preschool classroom in 2026 and discovering a shiny interactive display on the wall, a cart of fully charged tablets, and a single overworked teacher attempting to supervise twenty-three four-year-olds who, to be honest, would much rather stack blocks is almost comical. The screens are brand-new. They are not the staffing ratios. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s Spanish chapter, OMEP Spain, has been raising an issue that no one in the Ministry of Education seems eager to address: why has the government spent significantly more money on digital gadgets than on the teachers of young children?…
Author: Nelson Rosario
Nelson Rosario
Nelson Rosario is an Editor at worldomep.org and a law school student who has found, somewhere in the intersection of legal theory and human development, a cause worth building a career around: ensuring that every child has access to quality education and the healthcare they need to thrive. Nelson approaches child advocacy with the analytical precision of a person who has been taught to analyze systems, spot flaws, and make the case for change. His knowledge of how policies are made, where they fall short, and what it would take to hold institutions accountable for the children they are meant to serve has improved as a result of his legal education. His support, however, goes beyond academics. It stems from a sincere belief that early childhood health and education are not being adequately addressed by the legal and social frameworks in many places. Nelson adds a legal and policy perspective to discussions about child welfare through his contributions to worldomep.org, asking not only what ought to be done but also what can be required, safeguarded, and upheld.
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Bureaucrats are uncomfortable with the number two thousand for some reason. Not ten, not a hundred—those are doable, unimportant. However, the math shifts when 2,000 teachers in one Polish city decide, almost at the same time, that they’ve had enough. Schedules fall apart. Parents rush around. After years of underpaying educators, politicians suddenly show a keen interest in “dialogue.” The strikes in Poland’s educational system were not sudden. Salaries that barely covered a third of a family’s living expenses, a disorganized school reform that eliminated junior high schools overnight and eliminated 6,600 teaching positions, and a career promotion timeline that…
Even when the topic is simple, planning a six-day international conference can be challenging. The complexity increases in ways that spreadsheets cannot handle when the event includes a Holocaust memorial site, tree-planting ceremonies for dozens of national delegations, and parallel sessions covering seven thematic axes about children’s rights. The 78th OMEP World Assembly and Conference, which will take place in Poznań from July 13–18, 2026, is essentially what the Polish OMEP Committee and the Faculty of Educational Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University have taken on. Pausing on the scale is worthwhile. Nothing quite this multi-layered has been attempted by OMEP…
At the annual OMEP Argentina International Encounter on Early Childhood Education, you can almost instantly sense a certain kind of energy that only arises when people who are passionate about something come together in one room. The event, which is currently in its nineteenth edition and is known by its Spanish acronym EIEI, has developed from a small national conference into what many educators in Latin America believe to be the most significant annual gathering on early childhood care and education in the region. It’s not an official title, and it’s not a small claim. However, the conviction is difficult…
Every time someone in New Zealand wishes to downplay the work being done in early childhood education centers, a certain phrase keeps coming up. nannies. Even those who ought to know better occasionally say it casually. Every time it lands, thousands of professionals with degrees who develop curricula, evaluate learning outcomes, and adhere to a national framework as rigorous as anything in a primary school classroom are silently insulted. For many years, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s New Zealand branch, OMEP Aotearoa, has fought against that description. Pushing harder lately. The organization, which has been active in New…
A mid-sized Polish city that most people outside of Europe couldn’t locate on a map is the focal point of an unusual development in the field of early childhood education. The 78th OMEP World Assembly and Conference will take place in Poznań this July, bringing together academics, researchers, and—perhaps most importantly—policymakers from over forty nations. It may not seem like much, but that final detail is crucial. It is not an easy logistical or political task to get education ministers and senior officials in the same room as child development researchers and preschool teachers. However, since 1948, OMEP, the World…
Asking thousands of academics, researchers, and policymakers in a Polish university city directly if they have been paying attention to the people they purport to represent has a subtly radical quality. These individuals are younger than eight years old. The conference, OMEP 2026, is set to take place in Poznań, Poland, from July 13 to 18. Its theme, “When a Child Speaks…” Korczak’s Inspirations for Education and Children’s Rights,” is inspired by a man who perished in a Nazi extermination camp while defending the children under his care. That is the 78th OMEP World Assembly and World Conference’s official title,…
A scene that would have been unimaginable fifteen years ago is unfolding in reception classrooms all over Britain. On their first day of school, four-year-olds can’t hold a pencil, won’t sit still, and can only speak in short bursts of four words. Many of them cut out the shape of a cell phone when given cardboard and scissors for a creative exercise. They are familiar with that world. Not pretend kitchens, not mud, not blocks. phones. Lucy Fox, the assistant headteacher at Stoke Primary School in Coventry, has seen this trend solidify year after year. A seasoned receptionist in Hampshire…
Governments often fail to recognize a certain type of gathering until it is too late. Among them is the yearly hui of OMEP Aotearoa. This unannounced gathering of early childhood academics, practitioners, and advocates, which is typically held in a university lecture hall or community venue somewhere between Wellington and Auckland, has become the site where New Zealand’s ECE policy is put to the test, dissected, and occasionally publicly denounced before lawmakers even look at the documentation. It’s not a demonstration. It’s not a conference in the fancy corporate sense. It’s more obstinate than either of them. The World Organization…
Spending thirty years writing position papers in committee rooms and still thinking those papers are important to a four-year-old in South Auckland seems almost counterintuitive. However, that is basically what OMEP Aotearoa’s longest-serving members have done and still do with a tenacity that verges on silent defiance. With support from UNESCO, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education was established in Prague in 1948 and now has operations in over 70 nations. It has a tiny chapter in Aotearoa. Its seasoned leaders, some of whom have been involved since the early 1990s, firmly believe that local classrooms, despite their lack…