Reflections on the quality of early schools

Abstract

Since the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the term “quality” has become a sort of icon in the organizations. Every company, organization or establishment that boasts will define itself as one of “quality”: They all want to offer quality service and care, and have the best quality products. This trend has also reached the educational world and, therefore, to pre-schools. Essentially considered a working tool, this article attempts to contribute to the exploration —from various perspectives— of professional claims and the analysis of the daily work within educational establishments. We hope that the professionals have a guidance tool that they can use to reflect on some criteria, responsible for the creation of educational quality, in order to establish conditions for the improvement of schools’ quality. This document comprises two different but complementary sectionser: (a) Quality and beyond quality in early childhood education.  (b) Criteria for quality assessment in primary schools. Both sections are elements of reflection and, therefore, in constant development and ongoing re-processing. The quality is also the ability to always be able to review the parameters that define it.