Tigran G. Shmis

The issues of preschool education’s quality assessment, which is especially important in the light of the new education law in the Russian Federation, are discussed. The examples of quality assessment technologies implemented in six Russian regions are presented. Based on own experience, Tigran Shmis suggests that standards of quality assessment should not be exclusively based on formal grounds, but rather conditions of their implementation should be taken in consideration.

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.

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.