The shortage of qualified educators has raised concerns all over Europe and beyond. In Finland, the most drastic shortage of qualified staff is among early childhood education and care (ECEC) teachers (Työvoimabarometri 2022, Kosunen et al 2023). The earlier research suggests that socio-economic composition of areas influences the professional choices and turnover of qualified educators. For example, studies focused on teachers' work preferences in comprehensive education show that teachers prefer to work in affluent institutions (e.g. Ingersoll & May 2012). The paper examines whether this vicious cycle of segregation where teacher segregation and socio-economic segregation of the neighborhoods are associated, that has been identified in comprehensive education can be identified also in ECEC.

This paper investigates the segregation of educators in ECEC in Finland, focusing on the relationship between socio-spatial and institutional segregation. Socio-spatial segregation refers to the differentiation of residential areas in terms of their socio-economic composition (e.g., Boterman et al. 2019). In this paper, institutional segregation refers to differentiation between educational institutions, such as ECEC centres, in terms of the distribution of qualified and non-qualified educators. While socio-spatial and institutional segregation have been extensively studied in comprehensive education (e.g. Boterman et al. 2019; Kauppinen et al. 2020), research related to ECEC is limited.

We ask:

1. How are the qualified and non-qualified educators distributed accross ECEC centers?

2. Is there an association between institutional teacher segregation and the socio-economic composition of the neighbourhood?

The study utilizes national register data on ECEC personnel in Finnish ECEC to examine the association between institutional segregation, and the connection with the social composition of their neighborhoods. The data sources are early childhood education information repository: VARDA; and socio-demographics on residential areas data, Statistics of Finland). The data comprise qualification information on 26,196 ECEC center educators, including ECEC teachers, social pedagogues, child carers, assistants, family daycare workers, and the information of the ECEC centre they work in. By using postal codes, we connect this information to data on socio-demographics of the area the centres are located at. Regression analysis is used for examining the association between socioeconomic structure of the area and the proportion of qualified educators.

Initial analysis shows that private ECEC centres have larger proportion of unqualified personnel compared to public ECEC centres. Also, initial analysis shows that there is a connection between socio-economic composition of the area and the proportion of qualified educators. The paper suggests that analyzing the educator segregation in publicly funded Finnish ECEC system can provide valuable insights into teacher segregation within a welfare state. The concentration of qualified educators in affluent areas may exacerbate educational inequalities, as children in disadvantaged areas may have less experienced or unqualified teachers.

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