In the past years the value and importance of institutional early years education and care has increased massively. This is visible in alle European member states and related in first place to kindergarten education for children from 3-6 years of age but also more and more to eary years education and care for younger children in chreches for children from 1-3 years of age. At the same time, however, also the discussions about the assurance of quality in institutional early years education and care has started and increased over the years and in all member states there is the need for quality assurance models for early yeary education and care which are already elaborated and implemented for school education for years. At this moment, unfortunately, all existing and applied approaches are exclusively concentrating on quantitative and mainly infrastructural criteria for quality assurance and measure quality on the basis of size of rooms, ratio between pedagogical staff and children etc. For sure quality assurance on pedagogical level in institutions is much more important and has to be approached differently. This is the main aim of the Qualipaed project. The Qualipaed project develops a scientifically proven and largely tested European Quality Seal for pedagogical quality in institutions of early years education and care. Through the use of this Quality Seal it will for the first time be possible to measure pedagogical quality and on this basis and develop it further. In front of this background the project will elaborate three core intellectual outputs: IO1: a validated criteria catalogue with pedagogical quality criteria on 4 different levels (structural, orientation and process quality as well as quality of the family relation) IO2: a handbook about the European Quality Seal containing all information about the criteria, the whole assessment and quality seal awarding process for institutions of early years education and care IO3: a policy paper with recommendations for the political stakeholders about assurance and development of pedagogical quality in institutions of early years education and care. The results of the project are aiming at institutions of early years education and care as well as their carriers, pedagogical staff in institutions, parents but also political decision makers for early years education and care on local, regional and national level. At the same time the project is also providing an active contribution to the European discussion and decision process in the field of quality assurance in institutional early years education and care. The project partnership is consisting of seven institutions from five European countries and is reflecting the whole competence and experience spectrum which is deemed necessary to develop the project outputs in highest quality. Partners are carrier organisations of institutions of early years education and care, pedagogical experts and staff and scientific experts which is crucially necessary for the scientifical standards envisaged in the European Quality Seal. The activities of the project cover the broad research at target group representatives about the validation of single quality criteria, the mutual development of the quality seal handbook and the poliy paper. All tasks will be accompanied by a European learning and teaching event where experts will be trained on the assessment and quality assurance process as well as a broad pilot phase where all results will be field tested. Through these activities the project will directly involve about 1800 target group members, pedagogical staff, parents, political decision makers and other responsible stakeholders as well as about 50 institutions of early years education and care. On the level of dissemination the project is implementing a comprehensive European dissemination and exploitation strategy with a exact identification of target group members and stakeholders and a number of dissemination tools (website, social media platform, project brochure) as well as a multiplier event at the end of the project which will present the final results to the target group and sets the start for the sustainable and broad use of the European Quality Seal for pedagogical quality in institutions of early years education and care.
Over the past two years, the project consortium of the Qualipaed project has been able to successfully implement all planned goals and to establish long-term cooperations and networks through very intensive and good cooperation. In a first step, a list of criteria could be drawn up based on a very extensive validation study, which includes all applicable instruments of the quality label. The label handbook provides a very detailed overview of the certification process and all the necessary detail steps within that process. For the creation of the handbook, the developed seal of quality was piloted in the partner countries in at least 10 different elementary education and support institutions, so that this experience could also be incorporated into the handbook and the policy paper. For the successful piloting of the quality seal, two female and male auditors were trained and prepared for the successful implementation in the partner country within a five-day teaching, learning and training activity from all partner countries. The project partner PädQUIS from Germany acted both during the teaching-learning. and training activity as well as the developments of the manual and the validation study as an expert in the project with a lot of know-how in the field of quality assessment and assurance. The start-up validation study, in which we asked for the quality perspective of parents, professionals and agency representatives in all partner countries, reached at least 3,600 people who were thinking about quality issues and their implementation. During the school week of the auditors, as well as in the course of the pilotaudits, at least 45 kindergartens were able to benefit from the pilotaudits and received detailed feedback on specific quality areas directly or after successful evaluation of the piloting. This allowed the professionals an external view of the structures and their practical work with the children as well as a first opportunity to feed the feedback long-term in the quality assurance. Throughout the course of the project, many possibilities of working on the project and the results as well as the networking with stakeholders were used. As early as November 2018, initial project results were presented to an interested public sector. In addition to reports on the course of the project and articles in specialist journals, insights into the project and its results were also made possible during further education of kindergarten teachers in Austria. The project was repeatedly announced in many newsletters. Above all, the multiplier event also contributed greatly to the dissemination of the project towards the end of the project, where the main results were presented and the starting signal for the use of the quality seal and the developed materials was laid. Together with about 80 participants of the final conference, a panel discussion with representatives of different stakeholders from the partner countries discussed the quality and applicability of the quality label. At this very successful multiplier event, therefore, the very positive project conclusion could be celebrated. All project reports are available on the project partner homepages in all partner languages plus English and are intended to contribute to long-term quality assurance and quality assessment in elementary education and care.