Bournemouth Quality Standards for Early Education and Care (BQS) is a quality-assurance scheme for nurseries, pre-schools and school reception and nursery classes. The scheme is managed by the Early Years Service within Bournemouth Borough Council.

The scheme exists to help practitioners to evaluate and improve their service to ensure that they are continuing to provide the best possible care and education for all children who attend.

This quality assurance scheme is also being developed for both childminders and out-of-school settings.

To recieve full BQS accreditation, childcare providers must complete eight seperate modules.

These are:

• Visions, values, policies and procedures
• Belonging and connecting
• Being and becoming
• Contributing and participating
• Being active and expressing
• Thinking, imagining and understanding
• The practitioner's role in early learning
• Leadership, management and staff development

To complete all eight modules, takes, on average, three years.

Childcare providers who pledge to complete the award, show that they are committed to raising standards and improving the quality of care they provide for children.

For further information on Bournemouth Quality Standards for Early Education and Care, please select the following link:

Bournemouth Quality Standards (BQS) Factsheet - pdf (402kb)

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The Children's Information Service can provide further details on the childcare settings within Bournemouth that are BQS accredited.