Improving the evaluation system of the preschool education in Serbia

Since 2019, European Policy Centre (CEP) has been implementing two assignments within the “Early Childhood and Education and Care” (ECEC) project carried out by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and financed by the World Bank. The two complementary assignments are aimed at improving (external and self-) evaluation process of preschool institutions in Serbia with the aim to provide support to the MoE and the Institute for the Education Quality and Evaluation (IEQE) in preparing resources for the full implementation of the preschool education quality evaluation system based on the revised Preschool Quality Standards, thus ensuring the quality, continuity and sustainability of the ECEC project activities related to the evaluation of preschool education quality.

For that purpose, CEP, with a number of high-quality experts in the education sector, has been working on:

• improving the competencies of the project’s development goal evaluator,
• monitoring the achievement of the Project developmental goal related to the improvement of the preschool education quality based on the revised quality framework,
• defining descriptors for quality standard indicators, creating tools, developing guidelines for external evaluators and building external evaluators’ expert capacities,
• evaluation of the quality of work of the preschool institutions sample and development of baseline report on quality of work of preschool institutions,
• final evaluation of the quality of work of the preschool institutions sample and the production of the target report on the improvement in quality of work of preschool institutions,
• providing resources for self-evaluation of the preschool institutions by devising the self-evaluation methodology in line with the Preschools Quality Standards and the Rule Book on Preschool Quality Evaluation, recommendations envisaged by the Report on self-evaluation practice, new PCF and other current documents in the area (Standards of Competence for Preschool Teachers and other laws and regulations), as well as preparing the proposed instruments for the self-evaluation process,
• piloting the self-evaluation instruments in the sample of the preschool institutions,
• delivering the Guidebook on self-evaluation of preschool institutions, an instrument for the reflective practice implementation, improvement of preschool teachers’ competencies and development of learning community, thus contributing to the quality of practice and the ECEC sector in general,
• developing a model of providing the mentoring support to preschool institutions during the self-evaluation process, including the means of monitoring, supervising, and reporting on the mentoring support,
• providing training for 587 representatives of all public preschool institutions on the application of the Guidebook and other self-evaluation tools, and
• delivering mentoring support to all public preschool institutions in the process of self-evaluation throughout 2022/2023.
  

Contact person: Ljubica Kovačević, Project Manager ljubica.kovacevic@cep.org.rs

For more information on the Early Childhood Education and Care project, please visit their website.