The quality of care for 5–9-year old children in the school environment in Poland measured with the use of the SACERS scale

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study is to present the quality of care provided to children in Polish school common rooms. Diagnostic research was conducted using the tool ‘School-Age Care Environment Rating Scale’ (SACERS), and 56 school common rooms intended for children aged from 5 to 9 years were studied, both in rural and urban settings. The obtained results indicate that the level of quality of care offered to children is minimal. The presence of qualified teachers as well as the developed care and education work programmes and plans seemed to have a positive influence on quality. However, detailed analyses demonstrated that Polish school common rooms do not meet SACERS requirements in terms of health and safety, educational activities, or space and furnishings. Although it is generally believed that school common rooms in Poland meet the basic needs of the youngest students, the obtained research results suggest there is an urgent need to improve the quality of care for children enrolled at common room programmes. The added value of the project is demonstrating the potential of the SACERS scale, proving that it can be used in Poland, and that it provides an opportunity to conduct comparative studies on an international scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Child
• care
• quality
• school common room
• SACERS scale

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Teresa Parczewska http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7651-5519

Notes

1 It is believed that the term ‘quality’ (Greek: poiotes) was first defined by Plato as ‘a certain degree of excellence’. In those times, it was a philosophical notion, and it remained one until modern times. After numerous disputes, it was established that ‘quality’ possesses objective and measurable features, such as mass and shape, as well as subjective features, evaluated differently by each person, such as colour or smell. Creating the Latin philosophical term as the equivalent of the Greek notion, Cicero introduced the word ‘qualitas’, which entered some Romance and Germanic languages as the Italian ‘qualita’, the French ‘qualite’, the German ‘die Qualitat’, and the English ‘quality’.

https://www.wirtualnemedia.pl/slownik/jakosc (Accessed November 8, 2018).

2 https://www.nik.gov.pl/aktualnosci/nik-o-funkcjonowaniu-swietlic-szkolnych.html: NIK o funkcjonowaniu świetlic szkolnych [Supreme Audit Office on the functioning of school common rooms] (accessed November 22, 2018).

3 Ibid.

4 An analysis of the literature concerning the quality of care for children from the first years of elementary school in school common rooms justifies the statement that the SACERS scale is not used in Poland.