QuILT: Covering every aspect of quality

Improvement in the quality of provision requires an improvement in practice, but the challenge lies in maintaining and continuing this. Changes in practice are best built upon strong convictions and principles and this is what has been developed using Quality Improvement in Learning and Teaching (QuILT), a modular quality assurance and improvement scheme for early years settings.

QuILT was developed ten years ago in Brighton and Hove and since then many settings from a number of local authorities have participated. It was originally inspired and influenced by the Effective Early Learning programme (Pascal and Bertram, 1996). Nine individual, termly modules are worked on over a possible period of three years which reflect the Pascal and Bertram ‘10 Dimensions of Quality’ (1996). The tenth dimension of quality, Monitoring and Evaluation, is addressed throughout the process.

QuILT supports the view that where practitioners are engaged in systematic, honest and informed reflection on what they do, the quality of the provision for the children will be enhanced. In this way, standards of good practice are achieved within an ethos of continual development.

Practitioners speak of how QuILT has celebrated, challenged and improved their practice demonstrating that it has: 

• a positive impact on children’s care and learning
• a positive impact on partnerships with families
• a positive impact on practitioners.

Settings undertaking QuILT include childminders, pre-schools, children’s centre nurseries, maintained nurseries, independent schools, reception and nursery classes in maintained schools, a special educational needs assessment centre and private daycare nurseries.  

SUBTLE BUT POWERFUL CHANGES

The nursery teachers at Stifford Clays Infant school, Thurrock, were eager to participate in QuILT as they had both come from Key Stage 1 backgrounds and felt they needed further guidance to offer the best provision to the children.

Harli Green, EYFS leader says of their first module: ‘At first the process of evidence gathering, action planning and evaluation seemed a mammoth task but we were keen to continue, recognising the real value in what we were finding out and how we were developing as practitioners. 

‘Although we always had lots of other things to do we viewed these as secondary to our desire to improve.’

QuILT requires practitioners to become action researchers, gathering a range of evidence against a number of standards – such as questionnaires,  surveys, interviews and peer observations. Many practitioners find peer observations daunting but it is something that Ms Green found to be most useful. A couple of observations were taken to the staff meeting and used to bring about changes to the behaviour strategies.

Ms Green says, ‘We were then keen to begin our second module - physical environment - and envisaged that we would be landscaping the grounds.  But after auditing the setting we made changes that were much more subtle but incredibly powerful.

‘On one occasion, when we had re-organised one member of staff asked whether a lot of children were absent.  We realised that the apparent lack of children around us was due to the fact that they were dispersed in groups of varying sizes, completely engaged in independent activities inside and outside.’

She adds, ‘Once again the results of a module outgrew the initial focus.  By fine tuning the environment in which the children played and explored, other day-to-day nursery stresses such as behaviour, tidying, management of adults and safety just fell into place.’

CONFIDENT ABOUT GOOD PRACTICE

QuILT supports practitioners in becoming more self-reflective, better equipped to explain what they do clearly to others, and more confident in sharing their work with parents and the wider community. In Thurrock the setting presents the modules to a panel made up of early years specialists, which has again built confidence in speaking about the impact of improvements.

Harli Green says: ‘Despite our obvious nerves prior to our first panel it turned out to be a celebration of the hard work we had put in and it was good to receive recognition of our achievements from the panel of experts.’

Helen Beaumont, who leads on QuILT in Brighton and Hove explains how QuILT itself is also subject to continuous review and reflection. ‘As QuILT has roots in core values of quality improvement, and is part of an active learning community, it has proved to be enduring and adaptable, and easy to integrate with new initiatives and projects.

‘Current exciting development work includes quality for two-year-olds and a broad review to ensure readiness for the implementation of the revised EYFS in September 2012.’

The teachers at Stifford Clays have been transformed by the experience of QuILT. ‘While you are chipping away at concrete improvements such as making a display to show examples of positive behaviour, applauding someone who has almost done their zip right to the top, or labelling resources, slowly the ethos and attitudes of the team begin to alter. We are now supporting colleagues to implement similar improvements in the Reception classes and feel confident now about what good practice looks like in the early years.’

If you would like further information about QuILT please contact... Helen Beaumont   Helen.Beaumont@brighton-hove.gov.uk