Nurseries and other socio-educational services for the early childhood

In the educational year 2014/15, 13,262 units were registered on the national territory, offering socio-educational services for early childhood, 36% were public and 64% private. The available seats, total 357,786, covered 22.8% of the potential catchment area (i.e. children under three years living in Italy), a slight increase compared to 22.5% in 2014.

In 2014 municipalities spent about 1 billion 482 million euros for socio-educational services aimed at early childhood, 5% less than the previous year.

Families are increasingly contributing to the costs of the service: from 2004 to 2014 the share paid by families has increased from 17.4 to 20.3% of the current expenditure of Municipalities for socio-educational services.

There are still significant differences between the South area and the rest of the country: in the North-East and Central Italy, the places registered in public and private facilities covered 30% of children
under 3 years, 27% in the North-West, while in the South and in the Islands there were respectively 10 and 14 places per cent of resident children.

Children under three years that benefited of municipal services (or financed by the municipalities) varied from 18.3% in the Center to 4.1% in the South and Islands area.

Also noteworthy were the differences in municipal expenditure in relation to the potential catchment area. Comparing the provincial capitals, the highest expenditure was registered in Trento, with 3,545 euros per child resident, followed by Venezia with 2,935, Roma with 2,843, Aosta with 2.804 euros; on the opposite side were the Municipalities of Lanusei and Sanluri, which did not report expenses for this type of services, Reggio Calabria (19 euros per child), Catanzaro (38 euros), Vibo Valentia (46 euros).

All data, including at individual municipality level, are available on I.Stat, the datawarehouse of Istat.