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The author notes that the most important international initiative in education quality assessing including pre-schools is to determine “sustainable development goals until 2030”. As part of this initiative, national experts, UNESCO and Brookings Institute experts have been engaged in elaborating an initiative to measure the quality of education - Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF). The author emphasizes the similarities between the areas of quality preschool education development in the LMTF initiative and those contained in the pre-school education FSES. The article deals with the evaluation of Russia’s pre-school education quality using the ECERS scales. It is noted that the ECERS Scales are already being used by two regions in Russia - the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and Moscow. According to the author, the experience of using the ECERS in Russia has shown these international tools to be highly relevant to Russian pre-school education, comprehensible to teachers and experts, and to offer a great potential for developing the Russian system in terms of interaction between kindergarten teachers and preschoolers. The toolkit is of interest to researchers and specialists in regional education systems, heads of pedagogical universities alike because it enables them to get a comprehensive picture of quality both in individual establishments and in the preschool education system as a whole.

The authors report on a study of kindergartens, which was conducted by the Child Development Laboratory at the Institute of System Projects, Moscow City Pedagogical University, and which included testing of the ECERS Scales in contrasting groups that had been formed on the basis of expert assessments. One group consisted of kindergartens which used the The Golden Key program and a program called “Kindergarten as a system of conditions for developing individuality and capability for self-determination” with a high quality educational environment. The other group consisted of kindergartens with an average quality educational environment. The article analyzes the specific features in the educational programs these groups used. Both groups shared the teaching staff situation, which is conducive to reflection and initiative on the part of the teachers. During the testing of the ECERS Scales very few groups received high ratings for their quality of the educational environment. The authors conclude that shared reflection and initiative on the part of preschool teaching staff in the construction of education is a sine qua non condition for a high quality educational environment aimed at supporting children’s activities and initiatives.

The article describes the tools used to measure preschool educational environment – the ECERS Scales (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales). The authors address the following questions: What are the ideas of quality education underpinning the ECERS Scales, and Are they suitable to us? Is it generally acceptable to use tools developed in another country to assess education quality in your own? Does the scale measure conditions for the child’s future socialization and development at school? How does it work, what are its parameters for measuring quality? How reliable is it? Can this tool be used in different educational practices (e.g. the Montessori system, Waldorf kindergartens, etc.)? Or does it focus solely on specific program? It is noted that the fact that the ECERS scale is used in countries focused on child’s cognitive development is of great importance for Russian education, which has traditionally placed high value on “school readiness”. The authors come to the conclusion that the ECERS Scales fully meet the Federal State Educational Standard requirements and possess distinctiveness and therefore can be used to assess the quality of education in Russian preschool children. The ECERS Scales are highly promising in cross-cultural research that compares the quality of Russian and foreign pre-school education.