Early Childhood Monograph Series: The Quality of Education and Care in Infant and Toddler Centres (January 2009)* 01/01/2009

The quality of education in infant and toddler centres

Early childhood education is a highly diverse sector that includes many different philosophies and approaches to the education and care of young children.

All ERO education reviews in the early childhood sector focus on the quality of education. For ERO this includes the quality of:

• the programme provided for children;
• the learning environment; and
• the interactions between children and adults.

In this report, ERO based its introductory statements and findings about the programme, learning environment and interactions on a set of evaluation indicators published by ERO⁴, references to provision for infants and toddlers in Te Whāriki, and signposts and explanations of the Revised Statement of Desirable Objectives and Practices (DOPs) published by the Ministry of Education.⁵