Nursery World - Help yourself - Quality assurance

Quality assurance is a buzzword that needs examining, says Alison Mercer

Quality assurance schemes aim to boost standards by helping early years providers help themselves. They encourage staff to assess their own practice, compare it with the standards they aspire to and develop accordingly. At best, such schemes prompt childcarers to ask themselves what quality is and help them achieve it, increasing job satisfaction by supporting a questioning, reflective and involved approach.

Self-evaluation is a key part of quality assurance (QA), but typically schemes also offer mentoring and support, external assessment and accreditation. From a pessimistic viewpoint, staff who are already heavily scrutinised by Ofsted and Social Services inspections may feel QA is an additional burden - although many have willingly embraced it at their own expense.

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