Monitor transferred to the Expertise Centre for Childcare

Insight into what works in practice

Childcare has a positive influence on children’s development. For this to be the case, the childcare must be of good quality. This is why it is important to continuously strengthen the pedagogical quality of childcare. Under the Childcare Act, providers themselves are responsible for their pedagogical quality policy. The PiB monitor gives childcare organisations objective insight into the pedagogical quality of their practice. This enables pedagogical coaches to see what works in practice and what could be improved. By now, almost twenty childcare organisations are using the monitoring environment. This generates data on the extent to which they meet the statutory quality requirements and their own quality standards.

Broadening the mission

Yvette Vervoort, director of the Expertise Centre for Childcare, sees PiB Childcare as a valuable broadening of the mission ‘Working together to improve the pedagogical quality of childcare’. “Through self-evaluation, users of PiB Childcare gain insight into the pedagogical quality of their organisation. The Expertise Centre works with researchers, pedagogues and pedagogical coaches to formulate the pedagogical knowledge base: what every pedagogical professional needs to know. This combination offers many possibilities and opportunities for individual childcare organisations and for the sector as a whole.”

The Expertise Centre for Childcare will take responsibility for PiB services and use the signals from PiB to inform its programming and agenda-setting. It also supports the PiB doctoral research of Simon Hay at Leiden University. In this way, monitoring at the individual workplace also contributes to strengthening pedagogical quality across the childcare sector as a whole.

Strengthening the pedagogical improvement movement

The development team, which includes the expert agencies Hansei and Konsili in addition to KindeRdam and the NJi, has every confidence that PiB Childcare is in good hands at the Expertise Centre. They are confident that it will help strengthen the pedagogical improvement movement: measuring in order to know what can be improved, without a profit motive and with availability to all childcare organisations. All sector organisations were involved in this transfer process. Parties such as GGD GHOR, SZW, SWN and the academic community are closely monitoring developments.