Associazione FORMA: Azione in collaboration with SEM Cooperativa Sociale organised a Focus Group meeting on 12th April. It was attended by both public and private ECEC service providers, members of regional coordinators network in Umbria and Università degli Studi di Perugia. It aimed at identifying quality practices as well as approaches and methods implemented by both public and private ECEC services.

Many interesting elements emerged: the services in our region respond in a good way to the needs of families both in terms of flexible hours and programme, the importance of well prepared educators and team work, creative workshops for children and parents and importance of relation & communication with parents and families. Quality for ECEC is intended as quality and wellbeing of the child, not only in terms of flexibility, but mainly in terms of offer and curriculum.

Lithuanian education trade union organized the focus group meeting on March 14th. Participants in the focus group were from trade unions, kindergartens, Ministry of Education and Science and from National Agency for School Evaluation.

Lithuanian education trade union presented the SEQUENCES project. Participants were asked to discuss about good practices of early childhood quality assurance system. There were a lot good experiences identified, examples and different methods of parent’s involvement to quality assurance system, but still there is a lack of training for kindergartens teachers how to work with parents.

Also there was discussion about evaluation process of quality in Lithuanian kindergartens. National Agency for School Evaluation is preparing new Qualify Assurance evaluation system for kindergartens. It was decided that Lithuanian education trade union will continue to cooperate with authorities in this project.

A survey for parents and practitioners working at child care centres/nurseries is being held as part of a Erasmus+ project entitled “SEQUENCES – Self and external Evaluation of QUality in EUrope to Nourish Childhood Education Services” funded by the European Commission. This project aims to respond to the need to improve the quality of ECEC services through the creation of evaluation tools. The survey ends on 15th March 2017. Please respond according to your knowledge and your own personal experience. Click HERE to start the survey.

Welcome to this new website, which has been created to provide information and connect you with Erasmus+ project SEQUENCES – Self and external Evaluation of Quality in Europe to Nourish Childhood Education Services. Here you will find what the project is about and what we are trying to achieve, the partner organisations involved, the core activities and the targets/outputs of the project. On this website we will also be providing regular updates of what is happening, both in terms of implementation of the project and on the topic itself, which is the improvement of ECEC services at providers’ level by developing and implementing effective tools for evaluation. Click HERE to start with the proper project introduction!