The new education-focused inspections will examine the quality of educational provision in early childhood settings participating in the Free Pre-school Year programme. These inspections will have a developmental focus looking in particular at the quality of children’s learning experiences and achievements and how this is supported in settings by management and leadership, curricular provision, the learning environment, adult-child interactions and the use of play based approaches. Practitioners in the Early Childhood settings will also have opportunity to engage in professional dialogue with inspectors who have expertise in the area of early childhood education. This professional dialogue together with the publication of reports will provide valuable advice to practitioners on how to improve the quality of learning experiences for the children.
The education-focused inspections will be a separate programme of inspections but they will complement fully the regulatory, care-focused inspections by the TUSLA Early Years’ Inspectorate. Having separate care-focused inspections and education-focused inspections conducted by cooperating inspectorates is reflective of practice in other jurisdictions and there is strong evidence that this approach works very well.
Both the DES and TUSLA Inspectorates are committed to working closely to ensure that the inspection processes complement each other, to minimise disruption to the work of early years’ settings and to avoid unnecessary administrative burdens on leaders and practitioners in early years’ centres. In this regard, appropriate systems will be put in place to facilitate the sharing of inspection information between both Inspectorates. This will build on the collaboration between both Inspectorates during the joint pilot inspections conducted in 2011/2012 which established a shared understanding of respective roles and inspection processes, and an awareness of the demands on pre-school settings. The Inspectorate of the DES will consult with stakeholders in the sector in advance of commencing the programme of education-focused inspections.
The learning from carrying out education focused inspections in the Pre-School Year will contribute to long term planning for the regulation of the early years sector, including the assessment of learning and development outcomes for children aged between 0 and 3.
A National Early Years Quality Support Service, known as Better Start, has been introduced under the Early Years Quality Agenda. As part of that service, funding has been provided to allow for the recruitment of 30 graduates in early childhood care and education who will work directly with services to improve quality, including assisting services in the implementation of the Síolta Framework and the Aistear Curriculum. The new service will work closely with the City and County Childcare Committees and the Voluntary Childcare Organisations to support service providers in improving the quality of their services. The work of the service will be based on a new Practice Guide based on Síolta and Aistear, which is currently being developed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). This will be a support for staff in ECCE centres.
