Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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343. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs following the announcement of education-focused inspections in services participating in the free preschool year programme, the way this additional layer of compliance complements the existing Tusla inspection process in order to avoid increased administrative pressures on the sector; in view of the fact that education-focused inspections will only be carried out in services participating in the free preschool year programme, the plans in place to extend this to services catering for children aged from zero to three years to avoid the creation of a care and education divide in the sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44281/14]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The new education-focused inspections will examine the quality of educational provision in early childhood settings participating in the Free Pre-school Year programme. These inspections will have a developmental focus looking in particular at the quality of children’s learning experiences and achievements and how this is supported in settings by management and leadership, curricular provision, the learning environment, adult-child interactions and the use of play based approaches. Practitioners in the Early Childhood settings will also have opportunity to engage in professional dialogue with inspectors who have expertise in the area of early childhood education. This professional dialogue together with the publication of reports will provide valuable advice to practitioners on how to improve the quality of learning experiences for the children.

The education-focussed inspections will be a separate programme of inspections but they will complement fully the regulatory, care-focussed inspections by the TUSLA Early Years’ Inspectorate. Having separate care-focussed inspections and education-focussed inspections conducted by cooperating inspectorates is reflective of practice in other jurisdictions and there is strong evidence that this approach works very well.

Both the DES and TUSLA Inspectorates are committed to working closely to ensure that the inspection processes complement each other, to minimise disruption to the work of early years’ settings and to avoid unnecessary administrative burdens on leaders and practitioners in early years’ centres. In this regard, appropriate systems will be put in place to facilitate the sharing of inspection information between both Inspectorates. This will build on the collaboration between both Inspectorates during the joint pilot inspections conduced in 2011/2012 which established a shared understanding of respective roles and inspection processes, and an awareness of the demands on pre-school settings. The Inspectorate of the DES will consult with stakeholders in the sector in advance of commencing the programme of education-focussed inspections.

The learning from carrying out education focused inspections in the Pre-School Year will contribute to long term planning for the regulation of the early years sector, including the assessment of learning and development outcomes for children aged between 0 and 3.