| Summary: | Open day care institutions in Norway are expected to contribute to recruiting children to kindergartens (Regjeringen, 2012). This expectation can be argued to follow naturally from the kindergarten’s newly acquired position as the first step of the educational ladder. It may, however, be perceived at odds with kindergarten as a voluntary service and Norwegian early child care policy that supports both family- and kindergarten care. In this survey the leaders of open day care institutions evaluates to which degree their institution has a recruiting function. Leaders in publicly owned open day care institutions and institutions with a high rate of minority language users are the firmest believers in this recruiting function. Publicly owned open day care institutions also offer more activities aimed at recruiting to kindergarten than those owned by the church. Our data shows that the leaders of open day care perceives the task of recruiting as a dilemma: Which families should be supported in their choice, and which should be «gently pushed» towards kindergarten? In this situation the leaders tend to use the family’s language background as a guideline – it seems as mainly the minority language users are actively encouraged to use the kindergarten.
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