ABSTRACT
Recent debates about what represents high-quality effective early care and education reveal that this is a highly political area. Whilst there is consensus that all children benefit from a period of pre-school education before entering full-time school there is heated debate about what constitutes a relevant curriculum, the nature of the pedagogy and most recently the level and status of qualifications of early years practitioners. I acknowledge the complexity and the importance of the debate but I believe this will not be easily resolved. Meanwhile many thousands of children are attending hundreds of settings and I have chosen to sidestep the national level arguments and concentrate on the local level to consider how current practitioners can develop the quality of their provision from a service user perspective.
