School-aged childcare quality indicators: Play, learning and development

'Very good' children’s engagement

Children are successful, responsible and confident in their play as a result of high-quality experiences. Children are highly motivated and fully engaged by the range of rich, challenging, planned and spontaneous experiences both indoors and outdoors. Well-considered innovations and creative approaches successfully engage children’s imagination and enrich their play experiences. Skills for life are developed and enhanced through a playful, engaging environment.

We work effectively with families to support their understanding of the benefits to children of play and learning experiences which challenge and delight them. This collaborative approach fosters the development of trust and cooperation, which supports children’s wellbeing and development and gives them opportunities to flourish.

Children make informed choices about leading their play within an enabling, challenging and creative environment. Their interests are extended and sustained through the use of high-quality interactions, experiences and spaces. This includes developing strong connections to their own and wider communities. Children have time, space and support to make decisions to develop their creativity, resilience and independence.

'Weak' children’s engagement

Children have limited opportunities to follow their own ideas and interests, in their own way for their own reasons. Our play environment overall lacks inspiration. There is little to challenge or ignite children’s imagination and curiosity, or to encourage them to explore their ideas.

Children’s individual development needs and their interests are not reflected within the interactions, experiences and spaces with staff. As a result, children are not engaged. They miss opportunities to learn, build confidence and make choices. Children therefore lack interest and motivation and may experience boredom, distress or frustration.

Children have few opportunities to access their own or wider communities. This limits access to a wide range of resources and experiences to enhance children’s play and development opportunities.

'Very good' quality of interactions

Our understanding of child development is informed by relevant theory and practice. This enables us to skilfully support children and young people in extending their play. We support the emotional resilience of children and families through holistic and nurturing approaches to secure children’s wellbeing, including the right to play.

Careful observation allows us to see children as having thoughts, feelings and plans that we need to respond to and respect. This, alongside our high quality interactions, supports them to actively explore the world around them and builds their confidence across a broad range of outcomes.

We support and facilitate the play process to develop children’s confidence, creativity and curiosity. High-quality observations and interactions respect, support, and challenge children's play and learning. Children believe in their own potential and have fun in freely chosen and extended play experiences.

We have a strong understanding of when to engage and when to stand back and observe. We encourage children’s interactions with each other. Children have frequent, appropriate opportunities to develop their thinking and problem-solving skills through imaginative play and storytelling.

'Weak' quality of interactions

Conversations and interactions with children lack structure and challenge and miss opportunities to build on their interests. We lack understanding around children’s communication and language needs or their preferred ways of communicating. This results in missed opportunities for children to make progress and can mean children become passive, distressed or frustrated.

Our staff are not child focused in their interactions and fail to recognise and value children’s thoughts, interests and processes during play. Children’s play is often interrupted by adult led routines and interactions that are task oriented. As a result, children lack opportunities to become absorbed in their play, solve problems and follow their own interests.

'Very good' child-centred planning

Children are at the centre of all planning. We are skilled in recognising and responding to the different interests of children, as well as their stages in play and learning. We use observations of individual children’s patterns of play to plan, support, challenge and extend children’s development.

Children are highly motivated and fully engaged by the range of rich, challenging play opportunities, offered through a balance of intentional and spontaneous planning. Experiences reflect children’s ideas, aspirations, curiosities and meaningful next steps in their development.

Careful observations of play recognise and promote children’s interests, helping them to progress and achieve. Any additional supports are identified, planned for and implemented. Our highly responsive approach ensures children are developing a broad range of skills for life and learning.

We work together with children, families and partners to support children to enjoy their successes and share their achievements.

'Weak' child-centred planning

Opportunities to observe and extend children’s play are missed, leading to gaps in understanding around their interests and overall development. We either do not have, or do not use, information needed to effectively respond and plan to meet children’s individual needs and interests, including additional supports where required. As a result, some children are not experiencing appropriate opportunities to support and consolidate their own learning through play and are not sufficiently challenged at an appropriate level.

There are limited or inconsistent approaches in place to evaluate children’s progress and achievements. Information gathered is not individualised or used effectively to plan the spaces, experiences and interactions each child needs to thrive. We do not reflect together to respond to individual children’s interests or their stages of play and development. This results in a lack of meaningful, progressive planning over time.

Families are not involved or given high quality information on their children’s experiences, which results in a lack of consistency and continuity for children.

The following challenge questions can support your self-evaluation:

• How well do we support and encourage children’s natural curiosity, creativity and problem solving in our service?
• What approaches are we using to promote children’s developing skills over a broad range of areas, such as emotional, social, and physical development?
• How can children be supported to have confidence in leading their own play?
• How do we ensure we keep up to date with relevant theory, and demonstrate how our understanding of child development supports high-quality experiences?
• How do we ensure our approach to children’s needs recognises the independent thoughts and feelings of children as individuals?
• How does our service approach support for children to develop their thinking and problem-solving skills?
• How well do we support staff in undertaking their role in planning for and evaluating children’s progress?
• How effective are our processes to evaluate children’s development and achievements?
• How well does this information gathered about children’s progress inform our planning?
• How do we maximise opportunities for children to be challenged, creative and engaged in their play and experiences?
• How can we be confident that our setting maximises opportunities for children to be challenged, creative and engaged in their play, and to able to explore their ideas?