Determining quality of early childhood education programmes in Spain: a case study

This paper presents a case study where a specific protocol for assessing the quality of education programmes for children from newborn to age three was used. The article opens with a statement of the problem and a historical overview of Spanish educational policy which suggest that one of the main purposes of current legislation (LOE, 2006) is to ensure that centres provide high quality educational experiences. The paper goes on to describe the research that has been done in order to develop a protocol designed to assess educational programmes for children from newborn through age three. Finally, the article presents the results of a pilot project in which this protocol was applied in a case study. The information gathered and the conclusions derived from two stakeholders, parents and teachers, over two academic years is analyzed.