Kindergartens South

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 Kindergartens South 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

Kindergartens South, previously known as Southland Kindergarten Association, is made up of 24 kindergartens across the Southland region. Since 2021 there have been significant changes to the organisational structure and senior leadership team. The association is governed by a board of community representatives. A general manager oversees operations, supported by a senior teacher team, operations, finance, property, human resources and culture managers, administrative and maintenance teams.

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

3 Summary of findings

Governance and management have engaged in a recent review of the financial stability of the association. This has informed deliberate and strategic decisions for change management and the re-development of the organisations structure.

Conditions supporting the organisation to implement change include:

• recent leadership appointments to support delivery of operation matters such as compliance, property, and human resources
• additional appointments to the senior teacher team to support teaching and learning
• review of the operating model of kindergartens in response to community needs
• continued focus of the viability and growth of the association
• building a foundation of relational trust within the association and with the wider community.

Initiatives that the organisation has in place include:

• new operational systems, policies, procedures and practices 
• opportunities for teachers to liaise and network with a focus on building team culture and shared understandings
• provision for planned association-wide professional learning opportunities to build collective capability of teachers.

Quality systems, processes, and improvement practices, including internal evaluation at association level are in the early stages of implementation. The board and senior leaders have with external support undertaken useful reviews in key areas that have informed strategic decisions. Leaders within the association are not yet undertaking internal evaluation and therefore are not yet able to identify what is working well or not for different groups of children across the association. Quality improvement systems to monitor areas, such as, compliance across the kindergartens have been recently introduced. As a result, leaders are in the early stages of developing a clear picture of how well compliance matters are being met across the kindergartens. Internal evaluation for improvement occurs predominantly at kindergarten level and findings are not yet shared at association level to inform the overall picture of kindergarten improvement and performance.

Some senior and head teachers have had opportunities for professional learning to build their knowledge, skills and confidence in internal evaluation which has resulted in some useful changes. However, further work is required for senior and head teachers to develop a deeper understanding of effective evaluation to enable them to identify what is working or not for individual and groups of children. This includes gathering and analysing a wider range of data and using indicators of best practice.

A new senior teacher team is in early stages of developing collaborative ways of working. Currently they provide descriptive feedback reports to head teachers. Guidance to teachers about how to improve the quality of curriculum within their kindergarten is evolving. Developing shared understandings and consistent guidance for curriculum design, implementation, assessment, planning and evaluation practices would enable kindergartens to receive more useful feedback about their performance/areas of growth in relation to agreed expectations.

The association vision plans and priorities for improvement are beginning to include a focus on aspects of children’s learning and wellbeing. Leaders are aware of the need to support Māori children to achieve success as Māori and identify this as an area for further development. They are in the early stages of seeking, perspectives of Pacific families and communities when decision making. This is now a priority moving forward. There is a new process for distributing equity and targeted funding. It is timely to gather relevant information about the difference the allocated funding is making for individual and groups of children’s learning to determine if it is having the desired impact. 

4 Summary of findings from visits to services

ERO visited a sample of twelve kindergartens to verify what Kindergartens South 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. 

Curriculum design and teaching practices that support learners include:

• collaborative approaches to individual planning, inclusive of parent aspirations which build children’s positive learner identity
• enacted curriculum reflective of each kindergarten’s identified priorities for learning
• intentional and responsive teacher practices supporting children’s learning
• opportunities for children to learn through a broad range of curriculum experiences consistent with Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum
• opportunities for children to see, hear and speak te reo Māori 
• bi-cultural curriculum that integrates aspects of te ao Māori and provides opportunities to learn through the natural environment
• inclusive play and learning environments catering for children of a wide range of ages and abilities
• individual teacher’s evaluation and inquiry informing change in practice and environments becoming more responsive to children’s interests and needs. 

Through building relationships with Pacific families teaching teams are beginning to learn about Pacific values and knowledge, however most teams are in the early stages of including these within the curriculum.

5 Improvement actions

Prior to the next ERO evaluation Kindergartens South will progress the following actions through its Quality Improvement Planning: 

• Senior teachers to 
  • develop their shared understandings of quality practices for teaching and learning. 
  • develop guidance and expectations for kindergartens to design, develop and implement their curriculum in partnership with parents and whānau
  • provide more robust and evaluative feedback to kindergartens.
• Leadership to develop agreed ways of gathering information and reporting on groups of children at kindergarten and association level to better inform decision making and better know what is working for groups of children across association.
• Continue to strengthen and implement systems for monitoring and maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements.

6 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

As part of this review, a representative of Kindergartens South 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:

 Non-compliances 

8 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)

15 July 2024 

9 About the Governing Organisation 

10 List of sampled services

All sampled services are on a full licence.

Services sampled in this evaluation: