A COMMON APPROACH ACROSS ALL PUBLIC SERVICES
Early education centres and schools are not islands. They work with other centres, schools, colleges, employers and a number of other services to improve the quality of the curriculum for children and young people, to provide them with the support which they need and to help them to achieve to their highest potential.
The framework of indicators in this second edition of The Child at the Centre is used by a number of public services. Education authorities use it to evaluate the quality of the service they provide across the range of their work. The same framework is used by youth workers, by social workers and by teams of professionals working in children’s services. Using the same framework provides a common language about quality. This makes it much easier for everyone who works with children and young people to share their findings and to support each other in improving the experiences and achievements of young people.
HM Inspectorate of Education will use the same framework in inspection, as will other inspectorates. When HMI inspect early education centres and schools, they will use a group of indicators selected from the overall framework. These indicators focus in particular on the outcomes and impact of the education provided by the centre and the important factors which contribute to these. HMIE will continue to take account of the National Care Standards for early education and childcare up to the age of 16 in our integrated inspections with the Care Commission.
The quality framework has been developed to be compatible with a number of quality models and awards, for example Investors in People, Charter Mark and the Excellence Model of the European Foundation of Quality Management, and can be used in conjunction with them. For example, the results of a Charter Mark assessment, and the evidence it was based on, can contribute to your evaluations using the quality framework, and vice versa.
The framework has been designed to be used at more than one level. For example, it can be used:
This means that the evaluations you arrive at in your centre, and the evidence on which they are based, can also contribute to evaluations in other contexts. For example, they could be used in evaluating the quality of services to children within your neighbourhood. They could also be used together with evaluations from other centres, schools, and teams to contribute to evaluations of the effectiveness of your education authority.