Dunedin Kindergartens Incorporated

1 ERO’s judgement of Dunedin Kindergartens Incorporated is as follows:

For an explanation of the judgement terms used and of the evaluation process please refer to the last page of this report. These judgements are based on the evidence provided to ERO during the evaluation process.

2 ERO’s Judgements

A Governing Organisation Evaluation evaluates the extent to which organisational and learning conditions support equitable and excellent outcomes for all learners. Te Ara Poutama Indicators of quality for early childhood education: what matters most is the basis for making judgements about its effectiveness. The Early Childhood Education (ECE) - Improvement Framework (teacher led services) derived from the indicators, is used to inform the ERO’s judgements about the organisation’s performance. Evaluation for improvement | Ngā Aronga Whai Hua is integrated across all of the above areas.

3 About the Organisation

Dunedin Kindergartens Incorporated, trading as Dunedin Kindergartens, is made up of 24 kindergartens. At the time of this evaluation 23 of the kindergartens were on a full licence, and one on a probationary licence due to change of location.

Governance is provided by an elected board of community representatives with delegated authority to the senior leadership team. In July 2023 a new general manager was appointed. The general manager oversees operations with recently appointed property, finance, human resource managers and administration support. Two senior teachers are part of this team and have responsibility for curriculum leadership.

Since the onsite phase of the evaluation the general manager has resigned and there is an interim general manager in place until a new appointment can be made.

Findings from ERO’s evaluation at the governance and organisational level included evaluating the extent to which Dunedin Kindergartens Incorporated’s strategic intentions, quality improvement systems, processes and practices support the provision of quality education and care at individual service level.

4 Evaluation Findings for the Organisation

During 2023 governance and management commissioned an external organisational review. The outcome of this review informed proposed strategic changes, an organisational restructure, and a change in governing arrangements. The review resulted in the development of a three-phase strategic roadmap for continuous improvement over an 18-month time frame. At the time of this ERO evaluation there was disagreement about future governing arrangements and the proposed strategic and operational direction. This has created a prolonged period of uncertainty within the association.

Dunedin Kindergartens does not have stable governance and management to guide its decision making.

• There has been disagreement about future financial and operational priorities viability and strategic initiatives.
• There has been some turnover of elected community representation.
• Lack of clarity of leaders’ roles and responsibilities.
• There are no systems for monitoring and reporting on the effectiveness of resource allocation to know if it is having the desired impact on children’s learning and wellbeing.
• There is not a shared understanding of what constitutes quality curriculum. Guidance for teaching teams has not been developed. There is limited formal requirements for senior teachers to report on quality or effectiveness of teaching and learning.

The organisation’s capacity and capability to do and use effective internal evaluation is variable.

• Regular reviews of health and safety assure the organisation that services continue to meet legislative requirements 
• Governance and management, including senior teachers do not use evaluation to scrutinise aspects of their services’ operation.
• Senior teachers are involved in networking groups with a focus on developing a shared understanding of internal evaluation. This has resulted in updates to templates, guidance, and implementation of professional learning for head teachers.

The senior teachers have identified three foci for 2024 internal evaluation: social and emotional competence, parent partnerships and oral language. These are in the very early stages of being implemented across the organisation. It is too soon to know the outcomes of these evaluations.

Leaders are taking steps to build relational trust to enable collaboration and improvement.

• Leaders are responsive to emerging issues and concerns. They are developing systems for improved communication and managing flow of information between governance, management and the community.
• Community trust is being rebuilt including providing opportunities for whānau to voice their views and be heard.
• Considerable work is required to drive quality improvement including stronger and settled leadership at all levels of the organisation. 

5 Leadership to support quality education and care

The two senior teachers work collaboratively. Senior teachers are assigned to individual services. Over the past 18 months their visits to kindergartens have been limited. Senior teachers have yet to resume regular kindergarten visits.

Senior teachers do not yet have the quality systems, processes and practices in place to determine the quality and effectiveness of curriculum provision across services.

• Senior teachers provide visit reports to head teachers with some helpful feedback although these are mainly descriptive. They respond to teachers’ requests for support and guidance in relation to children’s learning and wellbeing
• Senior teachers have an informal overview of the strengths and areas for improvement in each of the services.

6 Summary of findings from visits to sample services

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

The services are well led by experienced head teachers. All teaching teams have qualified teachers and a teacher aide. Despite the work required at organisation level, the kindergarten teams visited are improvement focused.

Teachers provide a responsive curriculum which celebrates children’s diverse backgrounds and follows their interests.

• Children have some opportunities to see, hear and speak te reo Māori. Some kindergartens are incorporating aspects of te ao Māori concepts and learning in the natural environment.
• There is some understanding and use of Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, learning outcomes to show children’s learning over time.
• A collaborative approach to working with families and external agencies is supporting children with additional needs to access the curriculum. 
• Experienced teachers support children’s developing social and emotional capabilities

The quality of internal evaluation is variable across the services. This results in limited information about the impact of changes made on outcomes for children

• Teachers make changes to practice through internal evaluation and could talk about the improvements for children’s learning and wellbeing.
• Opportunities are being provided by senior teaches to build teachers’ collective knowledge and understanding of how to do and use effective internal evaluation for improvement. 

7 Where to next for improvement?

Prior to the next ERO evaluation Dunedin Kindergartens Incorporated will progress the following actions through its quality improvement planning. This includes to:

• Re-establishing the board and confirming the strategic direction of Dunedin Kindergartens.
• Senior teachers developing indicators of quality curriculum and providing teaching teams with clear expectations and evaluative feedback/feedforward. 
• Senior teachers developing systems and processes for monitoring, evaluating and reporting on the quality and effectiveness of curriculum to governance and management.

8 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

As part of this review, a representative of Dunedin Kindergartens 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 promoted children’s health and safety and to regularly review their compliance with legal requirements.

9 Next ERO Review

The next ERO evaluation is likely to be in 3 years.

Patricia Davey
Director of Early Childhood Education (ECE)

25 September 2024

Further information about how ERO evaluates Akatea | Governing Organisations is available here. 

10 About the Governing Organisation

11 List of sampled services

All sampled services are on a full licence.

Services sampled in this evaluation included:

Description around ERO’s judgement terms

ERO’s judgements are based on Te Ara Poutama and the Early Childhood Education Improvement Framework (teacher led services).