The project attempts to address the absence of evaluation in early childhood education concerning:

a) the quality of early childhood education in Greece, and
b) the lack of reliable and valid evaluation instruments in Greece. The main aim of the project is to evaluate early childhood education in Greece, through the use of environment evaluation tools in preschool educational settings. For the proposed project, the evaluation scales ECERS-R (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised) and ECERS-E (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Extension) will be implemented in the Greek educational context. These instruments are widely accepted evaluation tools, and they are implemented in the USA and in most European countries.

Scientists from 5 Universities, with the support of 4 invited researchers of international standing, will be working together for this research. Additionally, 20 early educators will participate in the study as assessors of around 600 randomly selected preschool classrooms.  

The expected results are:
1) the evaluation of early childhood education and the adaptation of the instruments into Greek,
2) the development of a training program for evaluators and the provision of a training package,
3) the construction of a website
4) the identification of the weaknesses and the provision of targeted guidelines for further effective interventions in preschool centers,
5) the creation of a database with background information for comparative studies with other countries, and
6) the development of norms both for the overall quality of each school unit and for individual indicators.