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This article presents the findings of research on the quality of early childhood education and care in Moscow. This research is based on insight into the quality of early childhood education and care built in to The Federal State Educational Standard for Preschool Education and the cultural-historical ideas of L. Vygotsky. The main aim of this field research is to investigate “the strong points” and drawbacks of early childhood education and care in the capital city. The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R) is used as an instrument of field research. The results are based on a random sample of 36 preschools and kindergartens in one of the districts of Moscow. The research gathers data about the most comfortable and least comfortable aspects of the learning environment in the preschools and kindergartens of Moscow. Taking into consideration the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standards, the findings of the research revealed that the most important line of learning environment development in preschool and kindergarten are individual early care and education program, support for the independence of children, the creation of a more available and mobile environment, and optimal conditions for the development of thinking, imagination and child creativity.

The article presents an analytical review of the systems of external independent evaluation of preschool education quality in the United States and Singapore. Special attention is given to the specifics of National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) as well as programs like STARS (Pennsylvania, USA) and SPARK (Singapore). The key characteristics of external quality assessment in these countries include voluntary participation, the presence of a PR component (so that parents understand how to navigate in a variety of kindergartens), support of leadership qualities and training managers within organizations, the use of standardized rating scales (e.g., ECERS-R), which have been recognized by the international community and focus more on evaluating environmental performance rather than children’s results. So the review of the foreign practices of organizing pre-school education quality assessment helps us to better understand how to form our national system of independent expert examination of pre-school education in the most productive way. This is all the more relevant now that Russia is engaged in laying down a new regulatory framework and elaborating a social mandate for high quality educational services.