Auckland Kindergarten Association

1 ERO’s Judgements

A Governing Organisation Evaluation evaluates the extent to which organisational conditions support equitable and excellent outcomes for all learners in the organisation’s services. Te Ara Poutama- indicators of quality for early childhood education: what matters most is the basis for making judgements about its effectiveness. The Governing Organisation Quality Evaluation Judgement Rubric derived from the indicators, is used to inform the ERO’s judgements about this organisation’s performance.

ERO’s judgement for Auckland Kindergarten Association is as follows:

ERO’s judgement Organisational Conditions

The organisation conditions encompass Ngā Akatoro | Domains of:

• Ngā Aronga Whai Hua | Evaluation for improvement
• Kaihautū | Leadership fosters collaboration and improvement
• Te Whakaruruhau | Stewardship through effective governance and management. 

2 Context of the Governing Organisation

Auckland Kindergarten Association (AKA) trading as Ngā Tamariki Puāwai o Tāmaki, is a regional organisation comprised of 111 centre-based services. AKA is implementing its project to employing 100% qualified teachers. At the time of this evaluation all services were on a full licence.

The chief executive officer has overall responsibility for operations. She works in partnership with an executive leadership team to manage the organisation’s services. An expanded senior leadership team includes additional teaching and learning specialists, who provide guidance and professional learning for teachers. Curriculum oversight and pedagogical leadership is the responsibility of the chief executive officer and the education and innovation team.

A governing board comprising of iwi, community and a parent and teacher representative works with executive leaders to enact the association’s vision, mission, values and strategic priorities of educational excellence, family and community engagement and being future focused.

Findings from ERO’s evaluation at the governance and organisational level included evaluating the extent to which Auckland Kindergarten Association’s strategic intentions, quality improvement systems, processes and practices support the provision of a quality curriculum at individual service level.

3 Summary of findings

Auckland Kindergarten Association is currently strengthening existing quality improvement systems, processes and practices at governance and management level. Some aspects that require further development include:

• improving governance practices by strengthening board induction and training to better support and build overall governance capability and sustainability
• developing cohesive intentional planning to enact the strategic priorities
• strengthening targeted reporting to the board in relation to the association's vision, mission, and priorities.

Conditions supporting the association to build an effective team culture include:

• a clear vision, mission and values that provides clarity of direction
• environmental crisis management that is responsive to the needs of teaching teams and their communities.

Strengths and expertise leaders are building include:

• re-engagement of parent and whānau participation with a focus on roll growth
• shared understanding and implementation of effective teaching strategies through the ‘Incredible Years training programme’ to support children’s learning and development
• teacher capability to do and use internal evaluation that is improvement focused.

A comprehensive curriculum and pedagogy manual with clear responsibilities and guidelines supports a shared understanding of the association’s expectations to guide practice. An Educational Excellence and Equity Project, which includes a framework for evaluating quality and effectiveness of education across the organisation has been scoped but not yet implemented.

4 Summary of findings from visits to services

ERO visited a sample of 12 services to verify what Auckland Kindergarten Association knows about the quality of each of the services’ learning conditions and to what extent the organisational conditions support service improvement. ERO selected the service sample in consultation with the governing organisation.

Eight area leaders and two curriculum specialists have effectively fostered a culture of collaboration, reflection, and improvement within and across their services. The curriculum specialists provide useful targeted pedagogical and internal evaluation advice and guidance, growing teacher capability.

The responsibilities of area leaders and their reporting frameworks are yet to have a sufficient focus on the quality of curriculum, teaching, and learning to support the enactment of the association’s strategic priorities.

Teaching practices and conditions that promote positive outcomes for children include:

• effective and consistently implemented strategies that foster children’s developing social competence and emotional resilience
• inclusive practices and individualised planning for children who have additional learning needs, developed collaboratively with whānau and external agencies
• seeing children under the age of three as capable and competent, effectively supporting them to fully participate in a variety of learning experiences
• well-maintained, resourced, and engaging learning environments.

Individual teaching teams with internal expertise are continuing to develop their thinking and appropriate approaches to support educational success for Māori children.

Most services are in the early stages of:

• considering how to reflect Pacific values and knowledge within their curriculum, environment, and teaching practices
• providing opportunities for parents and whānau to contribute to local curriculum design and planning
• seeking parent and whānau input into review and evaluation, including determining priorities for children’s learning.

5 Improvement actions

Prior to the next ERO evaluation Auckland Kindergarten Association will progress the following actions through its Quality Improvement Planning. This includes to:

• strengthen board induction and training to better support and build overall governance capability and sustainability
• developing cohesive intentional planning to enact the strategic priorities
• strengthening targeted reporting to the board in relation to the association's vision, mission and priorities
• develop indicators of quality, in relation to curriculum, and use this to guide regular review and evaluation of curriculum teaching and learning.

6 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

As part of this review, a representative of Auckland Kindergarten Association completed an ERO Governing Organisation Assurance Statement and Self-Audit Checklist. In these documents they stated that the organisation has the systems, processes, and practices to be assured that service providers for licensed services within the organisation are meeting legal requirements related to:

• curriculum
• premises and facilities
• health and safety practices
• governance, management, and administration.

The licensed service provider/s of the sampled services listed at the end of this report also completed an ERO Assurance Statement and Self-Audit Checklist for their service. In these documents they attested that they have taken all reasonable steps to meet legal requirements, including those detailed in Ministry of Education Circulars and other documents, related to these areas.

All early childhood services are required to promote children's health and safety and to regularly review their compliance with legal requirements.

7 Actions for Compliance

During the review Auckland Kindergarten Association provided ERO with evidence that shows it has addressed the following non-compliance:

• a daily hazard checklist that meets the requirements of the licensing criteria.
  [Licensing Criteria for Early Childhood Education and Care Services, 2008, HS12]

During its visits to sample services ERO identified the following non-compliances:

 Non-compliances  

8 Next ERO Review

The next ERO review is likely to be in 14-18 months.

ERO will visit a different sample of services at that time. 

Patricia Davey
Director of Early Childhood Education (ECE)

27 October 2023 

9 About the Governing Organisation

10 List of sampled services

All sampled services are on a full licence.

Services sampled in this evaluation: