Abstract:

Background:
Lately, strategic documents prepared by Lithuanian and foreign educational institutions and recent discussions held by pedagogical societies and stakeholders have considered the issues of education quality. The question of ensuring quality has become one of the key priorities of educational policy assisting the system of education in Lithuania with integration into the space of European context. The status of the family can hardly guarantee the required conditions for self / educating children at home in all cases.

Research question:
What educational factors determine the quality of children education in institutions and what assessment they receive from people concerned with quality of children’s education, i.e. from parents, educators?
The conducted research is aimed at examining parents, educators attitudes to educating children at the pre-school institution and at evaluating the indicated educational factors that might have an impact on the quality education of the learners.
Sample. The research was performed in the pre-school education institutions of Šiauliai City. 65 pedagogues and 113 parents, whose children attend pre-school and pre-primary groups, participated in the interview.

Methods:
The method of questionnaire survey, calculation of absolute and relative values, arithmetic mean and standard deviation (SD) were applied as a combination of qualitative and quantitative research for data collection, processing and evaluation.

Conclusion:
Based on the educators, parents opinion, several educational factors determining quality education of and by children from pre-school establishment to school have been identified: a competent educator, educational activity, educational environment and collaboration between educators, parents and children. The evaluation of the factors encouraging quality self/education discloses that the parents prefer educated and competitive teachers. They find it as one of the crucial factors as personal, professional, etc. abilities of teachers make an impact on child education. The obtained results show that the parents trust the teachers and are satisfied with the work done.

Keywords:

Children, pre-school and pre-primary education, quality.