The M.A. thesis examines the contents of Starting Strong (Volumes I – V) and the recommendations and results of the IELS (2018) and SSES (2018) studies conducted under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (hereinafter the OECD) that have been directing pre-primary school education policies and system solutions in the OECD member states since 2001. The analysis has shown that the OECD recommendations encourage a paradigm shift in the pre-primary school education design. They are centred on the results of children development, learning and accomplishments in the preschool period, while neglecting the process quality aspect that used to be emphasized prior to the publication of the documents examined in the thesis.
The thesis includes a review of the situation and an enquiry of the impact of the guidelines published in the examined documents in the field on pre-school education in countries whose education system is comparable to Slovenia: Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden. The results of the analysis have shown that in these countries the changes in the conceptualization of pre-school education and its quality assessment, which are dictated by the guidelines of the OECD documents, can be observed. Furthermore, the analysis of documents concerning the conceptualization of determining and safeguarding the quality of pre-primary school education in Slovenia has also been conducted. The analysis of the documents concerning the identification and quality assurance of pre-school education has shown that the projects Identification and quality assurance of pre-school education in kindergartens (2000–2002), and Self-evaluation of pre-school education in kindergartens: quality assurance (2003–2005) were based on the principles adopted during a substantive overhaul of the entire Slovenian education system published in Foundations of Curricular Reform, 1996) and were in line with the principles presented in the Kindergarten Curriculum (1999). The Designing and implementing a system for identifying and ensuring the quality of educational organizations (2014) and Establishing, improving, and pilot testing of the model of assessing and ensuring quality in the field of education (2019) projects introduced a new model for identifying and ensuring quality in kindergartens and schools, demonstrating a paradigm shift in the preschool education design and adherence to the quality concepts as dictated by the examined OECD documents.
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