In England, nearly all children attend an early education setting before starting school. ECEC has the potential to improve school readiness, but currently, understanding the finer nuances of quality provision remains a challenge. This means some children may be attending settings that are not as effective as they could be. Current systems have recently transitioned to a more detailed Ofsted report card system. However, even with the new five-point grading scale (ranging from ‘urgent improvement’ to ‘exceptional’), it remains an assessment of a specific point in time. For many providers, these snapshots - now occurring on a four-year rather than six-year cycle - do not provide the granular, day-to-day data needed to drive continuous quality improvement. 

This project sought to build on existing work in the sector by exploring the appetite for creating a framework that captures the nuances of quality provision and enables pragmatic, continuous quality improvement practices.

Our goals for this project were: 

• to establish a foundational understanding of how quality in ECEC is currently conceptualised and measured around the world, including how quality improvement practices are embedded into frameworks
• use this understanding to start a discussion with policymakers and other stakeholders regarding how quality is assessed, assured and improved through English systems, and how these three things might be improved 

The ambition was for this project to be a starting point for a wider piece of work that ultimately leads to a better, more aligned framework(s) that define, measure, and critically improve ECEC quality in England.

Despite increasing public investment in early childhood education and care, capturing the finer nuances of quality remains a challenge, as existing standardised frameworks often prioritise regulatory compliance over a holistic understanding of ECEC provision. The 2025 Ofsted reforms moved away from blunt single-phrase grades to a more nuanced report card, yet the system still prioritises regulatory requirements over supporting settings to improve the quality of their provision. For example, current measures of "process quality" - the actual interactions between educators and children - are often confined to expensive research projects and rarely used in practice.

This project aimed to build on existing work already happening in the sector and determine the appetite to create a more holistic standardised, national framework that defines and measures quality in a way that is pragmatic for settings to use between inspections.

We partnered with experts Dr Sara Bonetti and Dr Mona Sakr to execute a two-phased project:

1. Rapid literature review: a comprehensive synthesis of global ECEC research (2015–2025) exploring how countries like Australia, Norway, and Scotland conceptualise and measure quality across different cultural contexts, and how they use frameworks to support ongoing professional development and quality improvement.
2. Policy roundtable (November 2025): we convened senior leaders and policy makers from the Department for Education, Ofsted, and No. 10 to discuss the policy implementations of the research.

The literature review highlighted that successful international frameworks (like Australia’s National Quality Framework) share key traits: they establish core values, set measurable standards, and prioritise continuous quality improvement over simple compliance. This short report summarises findings from the rapid literature review.

We will be acting on the discussions held at the policy roundtable and sharing more in due course.