Over the past ten to fifteen years, kindergartens and primary schools have intensified their cooperation in order to optimise the transition from elementary to primary level. Children’s wellbeing and a good start to school built the focus of this measures. Many projects and new joint forms of collaborational work have been initiated – now, the focus lies on a sustainable further development of the achieved quality of cooperation.

The Paderborner Qualitätsstern is a manual to assess the cooperation during the transition from kindergarten to primary school. It enables educators and teachers to take a systematic survey of the activities they have carried out so far to organise the transition processes. The manual developed at the University of Paderborn offers scientifically based reflection of the current situation of cooperation in the form of self-assessment.

The Paderborner Qualitätsstern differentiates between three dimensions of cooperation:

A: The arrangement of joint work with kindergarten and primary school children.

B: Designing a framework for cooperation – creating structures.

C: Working together in a cooperation network – multi-professional teamwork.

For all dimensions specific quality standards have been defined.

The Paderborner Qualitätsstern can be implemented by individual institutions as well as across institutions in an existing cooperation network of kindergartens and primary schools. Through processing and reflection, the users receive a compact overview of the particular strengths and also of those areas of their network that require further development. The visualisation of the results in form of a star serves to provide a clear basis for further work (This is why the instrument bears its name).

Use the tab „About the PQ“ to download the PQ³ for free.

In the first and second editions, the Paderborner Qualitätsstern was developed by the authors Petra Büker, Julia Höke, and Thorsten Bührmann in cooperation with the Kind & Ko education office of the Paderborn youth welfare office. The third edition which now is available was based on the results of evaluation, even more adapted to the needs of practitioners. The team of authors of the third edition is formed by

Julia Höke (KatHo NRW), Petra Büker (University of Paderborn), Jana Herding (University of Paderborn) and Britta Vollmann (Kind & Ko Education Office of the City of Paderborn).

We wish all those who are involved in transition processes from kindergarten to elementary school pleasure and success in developing their pedagogical practice further. We are looking forward to receiving constructive feedback and reports on your experiences!