Evaluating and Improving Quality of a Network of Infant-Toddler Day-Care Centres in a Metropolitan Area

This paper will present a project of evaluation of infant-toddler day-care centres realised on demand of the City of Rome. In Rome, in the last five years, the local government has undergone a process of accreditation and subsidization of 75 private centres and requested an evaluation of their educational quality. The project implemented an articulated system of monitoring and evaluation aimed at building up an integrated network of public and subsidized centres and at improving the quality of all the centres in Rome. In the system the function of monitoring and controlling was thus changed into a shared process of discussion on the definition and evaluation of quality by a variety of participants. The local government agents and the private managers of the centres were requested to share the documentation, analysis, and evaluation of the different components of the quality of each service. The evaluation judgements were based on the documentation realised during a continuous process accompanying the educational process in the service and discussed with the teachers of the centres. The children's parents were also involved in the process of evaluation. This paper will discuss the value of an approach to the evaluation of early educational services based on inter-subjectivity and participation of many stakeholders.