Quality improvement in early years settings in Hong Kong and England

Abstract

With a growing awareness of the importance of early childhood education, the governments of Hong Kong and England have both increased investment through providing fee assistance to parents for buying services and providing funding to providers for offering ‘free’ places, respectively. Alongside the increased funding of early childhood education, a heightened interest in the quality of early years settings has arisen. This paper aims to develop a framework for comparative studies by addressing the similarities and differences in quality improvement of both systems. Three key issues are discussed: relevance of the quality criteria for assessment, interpretations of the quality improvement mechanism and its use in guiding practice, and the influence of contextual factors in terms of stakeholders' views of the quality process. It is argued that these key issues are fundamental to a framework for understanding different sociocultural contexts and dynamics in shaping the quality improvement of early childhood education.

Keywords:

• early years education
• quality improvement
• Hong Kong
• England

Notes

1. The existing research looking at quality improvement and the registration process has been predominantly focused on schools. Although some of the schools studied may have held responsibility for delivering early years education, there are many other practitioners who deliver early years education who lie outside of schools. As such, the work looking at the role of Ofsted inspections in schools can only provide an indication of how the sector improves quality as a result of Ofsted.