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• Guidance

National quality improvement network (NQIN)

The development of high quality childcare and early education services is fundamental to the Sure Start agenda and the ten year strategy for childcare.

Research shows that high quality early education, together with a good home learning environment, has a significant impact on children’s performance at school and their future life chances. It’s therefore vitally important that all Early Years settings offer services that are of high quality, and are committed to continuous quality improvement.

The childcare sector now has an important role in supporting work for quality improvement across all settings – LA, voluntary, private independent and others. Working with the DCSF, the National Children’s Bureau has set up a national peer support network called the National Quality Improvement Network (NQIN), made up of representatives drawn from LAs and national organisations. The Bureau has also published a set of good practice principles and guidance that link to other quality improvement initiatives that support delivery of the Early Years Foundation Stage, for example training being developed by the Children’s Workforce Development Council.

The NQIN supersedes and replaces the Investors in Children scheme. Schemes endorsed by Investors in Children have done much to help settings raise the quality of the childcare that they provide. However changes to the inspection regime, in particular the new Ofsted grading of outstanding and a greater emphasis on the learning and development requirements in settings than in the past, mean that the inspection system performs a stronger quality assurance function and provides parents with much of the information that they need about the quality of Early Years and childcare provision. The NQIN is supporting these changes.

Individual quality assurance schemes continue to operate to maintain quality across the childcare sector, but they are no longer endorsed by central Government. The new arrangements, taking in and drawing on the experience of Early Years practitioners, will add to quality assurance and improvement schemes by providing a national forum to share good practice and a framework to guide their development.

For further information about the NQIN please contact the Early Childhood Unit at the National Children’s Bureau at ecu@ncb.org.uk.

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Last updated on 12/08/2009