Implementation of the Federal Law Aiming at the Further Development of Quality and Participation in child daycare facilities and services

Goals

On 01.01.2019, a federal law aiming at the further development of quality and participation in child daycare facilities and services (“Good Daycare Act”) came into force. The objectives of the Act are to foster the quality of early childhood education and to improve participation. The Act is intended to contribute to a better compatibility of family and work and to the creation of equal living conditions for children growing up in Germany.

The “Good Daycare Act” requires an accompanying evaluation of the implementation and the impacts of the law. PädQUIS gGmbH (Berlin), the teacher training university of Schwäbisch Gmünd (ZQM, Prof. Dr. Stefan Faas) and the Institute for Work, Skills and Training (IAQ) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Prof. Dr. Sybille Stöbe-Blossey) are conducting a study in order to evaluate the implementation of the “Good Daycare Act”. The impacts are being evaluated by another consortium.

Procedure

The study is based on the approach of retrospective regulatory impact assessment. On the one hand, we evaluate the status of implementation in the different fields of action as well as the measures and the structures that have been developed by the federal states, taking into account the initial situation in the federal states and using literature studies, document analyses and expert interviews. On the other hand, the challenges and conditions for success of the implementation of the “Good Daycare Act” are analysed, based on secondary analyses (monitoring data, official statistics, further studies / expert reports) as well as on regional case studies and special workshops. In particular, we examine the contextual conditions of law implementation at the federal level and within the 16 states and investigate what development processes the federal states are initiating and what structures they are creating to establish a basis for achieving the goals of the “Good Daycare Act”. The evaluation of implementation thus provides an important basis for examining and assessing the impacts of the law. The results of the study will be included in the federal government's evaluation report on the law, which will be presented to the Bundestag for the first time in 2021.