Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated

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 Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated 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

Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated is a national organisation. It comprises 35 early childhood education services, including 23 centre-based and 12 home-based services. In 2023, a new Chief Executive Officer was appointed, along with two new members to the national leadership team. A team of service delivery managers support operational and pedagogical leadership in services. The organisation’s strategic intentions are to be sustainable, relevant, working with and for Māori and to contribute to change. Barnardos vision is for ’An Aotearoa where every child shines; and its mission statement is ‘Everyday work to make a lasting difference to the lives of tamariki and whānau in need’. 

At the time of this evaluation 32 of Barnardos New Zealand incorporated services were on a full licence. 

Findings from ERO’s September 2022 evaluation at the governance and organisational level included evaluating the extent to which Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated’s strategic intentions, quality improvement systems, processes and practices support the provision of a quality curriculum at individual service level.

3 Summary of findings

In September 2022 ERO tested its Governing Organisation approach in Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated. The strengths of the organisation were identified as:

• being highly responsive to whānau and communities to promote inclusion in learning
• the primary consideration in decision making is the wellbeing of children in the context of whānau relationships 
• effective collaboration across the organisation, and with community groups, to uphold wellbeing and remove barriers to children’s education 
• professional learning pathways that promote regular relevant growth opportunities to build staff capability
• additional strategies to build on the capability of leaders and teachers to work with and for Māori including giving prominence to te ao Māori in key documentation and professional learning.  

Findings from this evaluation confirm that these areas of strength continue to underpin the operation of the organisation.

Improvement actions to progress from EROs September 2022 evaluation included to:

• strengthen the improvement planning process to include an evaluation of the effectiveness of actions taken
• continue to develop the annual review process for services to promote expectations that they progress towards high quality education
• update the cycle of policy review, improve dissemination of policies to home-based educators, and strengthen systems of monitoring compliance of regulatory standards.

The organisation has made very good progress against these improvement actions. Leaders have strengthened quality improvement systems, processes, and practices. Once review and evaluation is strongly embedded across the organisation Barnardos will be in a better position to know what is working or not working, for whom and why. 

The development of a comprehensive and progressive Continuous Improvement Framework (CIF), which provides clear expectations of high-quality education across a range of domains, is to be implemented in early 2024. Once implemented this should enable the organisation to have a regional and national picture of quality practices within each domain.

Continuous Improvement plans, developed with the service delivery managers and service leads, monitor actions identified from the audit of the Standards Framework used in each service. These are yet to be evaluated, and moderated across the services, to consistently determine the quality of progress made and provide clear and consistent judgments about quality of practice at all levels. 

A robust inquiry has been undertaken to understand the difference between self-review and internal evaluation. This has enabled evaluation expectations, guidelines, and templates to be strengthened across the organisation. Through this process the leadership team have built their knowledge and understanding of self-review and internal evaluation to make judgements about the quality and effectiveness of programmes and practices. 

Regular policy review has been developed and is guided by a systematic index process. Policies and procedures are well aligned to licensing criteria and other legislative documents. A clear system has been established for visiting teachers to disseminate and unpack the intent of policies and procedures with educators. Comprehensive visit notes guide and monitor the quality of curriculum and compliance requirements in home-based services.

A review of the quality assurance policy and procedures has been completed. This now outlines expectations more clearly for the requirements of evaluation, review, and audit processes. The updated policy and procedure are currently in draft and will be rolled out to all of Barnardos early learning services in 2024. 

The comprehensive investigation and processes undertaken to develop shared expectations for internal evaluation has had a positive impact at leadership level. Leaders have made effective use of internal evaluation to inform national expectations, improve processes and increase the capability and collective capacity to do and use evaluation for improvement for itself and its services. 

Internal evaluation capability continues to be embedded across the organisation. Good use is made of qualitative and quantitative data to make judgments and inform future priorities. There remains some variability in understanding and implementation of internal evaluation at individual service level. 

Service delivery managers have implemented a strategic approach to the National Education Learning Priorities (NELP) and are supporting teachers/educators to have an increasing knowledge of these and focus more on learner outcomes in assessment, planning, and evaluation. A recent internal evaluation has supported leaders to provide guidance to teachers to incorporate the NELP’s in service documentation and learning environments. 

Leaders in centre and home-based services mentor and coach teachers/educators to develop their skills and understanding of the provision of a meaningful curriculum for all children. The learning outcomes of 
Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum are yet to be consistently explicit in all planning and evaluation. Leaders provide targeted professional development to build curriculum capability. 

An organisational wide priority of working with and for Māori is having an increasingly positive impact on growing understandings and implementing te ao Māori in ways that are respectful of Māori culture.  Organisational wide professional development at leadership level is raising the importance of success for Māori as Māori within a localised cultural context. At service level this is increasing opportunities for tamariki Māori to see, use and hear te reo Māori and experience authentic tikanga practices. 

Barnardos Auckland homebased services have participated in a new initiative called the ENGAGE approach which is to develop children’s self-regulation skills through intentional play. Several staff have been trained to deliver and progress this roll out in 2024. 

4 Summary of findings from visits to services

ERO visited a sample of 10 services to verify what Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated 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. These services were in Auckland, Wellington and South Island regions and included both home-based and centre-based services.

ERO found that children’s learning and development, is well supported through:

• responsive interactions within a play-based child-led curriculum 
• consistent focus on fostering children's social and emotional competencies 
• wide range of interesting learning experiences and suitable resourcing
• teachers responding effectively to children's interests and growing capabilities.   

In addition, in home-based services children are provided with:

• mixed age groups with a consistent educator promoting positive, familiar relationships
• regular excursions into the local community (including playgroups and music groups) to extend the homebased curriculum.

Infants and toddlers benefit from calm and unhurried environments that nurture their wellbeing and sense of belonging. Teachers/educators provide a personalised approach to following children’s individual interests, strengths, and preferences across the curriculum.  

There is a variation in the knowledge and implementation of culturally responsive practices for children from Pacific heritages. The organisation is responding to the children of Pacific heritage within its strategic plan. This now needs to be prioritised. 

The organisation provides additional and targeted resourcing to promote the successful inclusion of children with additional needs. Teachers/educators work collaboratively with whānau, and external agencies when required, to promote equitable opportunities for learning and success.

5 Improvement actions

Prior to the next ERO evaluation Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated will progress the following actions through its Quality Improvement Planning. This includes: 

• implementing and embedding the Continuous Improvement Framework to provide a regional and national picture of the quality of practices. Over time moderate the consistency of the judgements made to reduce the variability of senior leaders’ views of what counts as quality practice 
• progressing the organisation’s strategic objective to build teacher cultural capability to more effectively respond to children of Pacific heritage, their families and communities.

6 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

As part of this review, a representative of Barnardos New Zealand Incorporated 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 its visits to sample services ERO identified the following 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)

13 February 2024 

9 About the Governing Organisation 

10 List of sampled services

All sampled services are on a full licence.

Services sampled in this evaluation: