I am delighted to commend to you this revised edition of The Child at the Centre. It replaces all previous versions. Along with a revised edition of How good is our school?, this document forms the third part of How good is our school? The Journey to Excellence. The sets of quality indicators will continue to provide the core tool for self-evaluation for all early education centres and schools, but they are now complemented by the very useful materials in other parts of The Journey to Excellence series.
The indicators within The Child at the Centre reflect the developing context for early education. They focus specifically on the impact early education has on improving the educational experiences and lives of our youngest children in Scotland. This edition of The Child at the Centre highlights the importance of children’s successes and achievements, particularly the broad outcomes for learners within A Curriculum for Excellence1 and the vision statement for Scotland’s children.2
The early years of childhood are a key time in influencing the future lives of children. The benefits of high-quality experiences have been shown to enhance children’s emotional, social and intellectual development. Getting it right from the start is essential in contributing to long-term outcomes.
The emphasis on impact and outcomes underlines the principle that self-evaluation is not an end in itself. It should lead to improvements in the educational experiences and outcomes for children, and to the maintenance of the highest quality where this already exists. The Child at the Centre is about doing just that. It builds on existing good practice in early education across Scotland and internationally. It helps staff to evaluate their practice and identify priorities for action, including ensuring better continuity in learning between home and the centre, and from centre to primary class.
The Journey to Excellence provides sets of tools which can be used for continuous improvement. Journeys to Excellence, the digital resource which forms Part 5 of this series, will include the stories of those in early education who have moved forward significantly in their own journeys towards excellence.
Early education centres are now part of a wider partnership of professionals, all of whom deliver a range of services to children. This edition of The Child at the Centre, therefore, has evolved by adopting a framework for self-evaluation common to all public services and structured around six questions which are important for any service to answer. It also ensures the continuity of links with the National Care Standards which HMI and the Care Commission use in their integrated inspection work.
This edition also emphasises a culture in which all staff engage in professional discussion and reflection based on a shared understanding of quality and a shared vision of their aims for children. All staff should, therefore, be involved in the self-evaluation process, sharing observations and evaluating their work together.
In this context, self-evaluation will be a series of reflective professional processes which will help centres to get to know themselves well, identify their agenda for improvement and promote well-considered innovation. The quality indicators are a guide in that process and not a set of recipes for success. They sit alongside professional expertise and other sources
of guidance, for example on the curriculum, on learning, and on the leadership of change, in contributing to a lively debate about quality and the factors involved in achieving it in any playroom, nursery class and school.
Since the first publication of The Child at the Centre, self-evaluation has become increasingly embedded across Scottish education and has contributed well to improving achievement for all children. I commented in Improving Scottish Education3on the great strides taken by educational establishments in becoming aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, placing Scotland at the forefront of quality improvement internationally. I commend this second edition of The Child at the Centre to you in taking forward our collective commitment to continuous improvement and excellence in early education.
Graham Donaldson
HM Senior Chief Inspector