Regulating Child Care Centres In Malaysia: Is There A Bright Future?

This paper discusses the features which are predictive of child care quality in improving laws and policies of child care protection in Malaysia. Firstly, this paper explores previous studies which prove the importance of high quality child care towards the children development. The discussion will further explore various views and paradigms on the concept of quality in child care especially on the important traits of quality child care. Referring to the wide practice of experts in child care, the common categorization of quality aspects which are process quality and structural qualities is also discussed further. Next, the determinants of quality child care from structural features are examined. This discussion will, later on, engage on arguing that accreditation too shall be a vital indicator in ensuring all the quality elements of high quality child care centres are adequately observed by child care providers. This will later bring the discussion on the instruments which are compatible in measuring child care quality. Later on, this paper touches on the relationship of regulation and quality exploring on how structural aspects may be translated into regulations with the aim to enhance child care quality. This chapter concludes by identifying the main features of high quality child care to be scrutinised in Malaysia child care landscape looking from previous studies done across the globe including studies from Malaysia itself.