Waikato 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 Waikato 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

Waikato Kindergarten Association and Early Education Waikato provide a range of early learning services across Waikato and surrounding areas that include 29 kindergartens, seven education and care and two homebased services. Operating as two entities, they work collaboratively to provide shared governance and oversee the strategic vision. A recently appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) provides strategic leadership and reports to both boards. Senior leadership and leadership teams are responsible for operational and curriculum leadership to 38 services. The strategic vision gives emphasis to “ā tatou tamariki – he māia, he manawanui, he pukumahi/our children are strong in heart, head and hand”.

Findings from ERO’s evaluation at the governance and organisational level included evaluating the extent to which Waikato 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

Governance and leadership teams work collaboratively to enact the organisation’s vision, values and priorities in ways that:

• gives emphasis to child centred decision making that informs the allocation of resourcing to enable equity of access, participation and inclusion for children and their whānau
• prioritises children’s sense of security and ensures that teachers have time to develop positive relationships with children and whānau
• builds high levels of relational trust that supports improvement.

Intentional improvement actions guide the ongoing development of the bicultural curriculum and are successfully building bicultural capability across all levels of the organisation. These include strategic leadership and teaching team appointments, providing access to professional learning, development of support resources, allocation of time and expertise and monitoring progress. Leaders regularly reflect on what is working well to inform ongoing improvement.

Additional conditions supporting the organisation to realise strategic priorities include:

• stable governance and effective financial management that aims to promote physically and emotionally safe environments for children and adults
• intentional appointment and recruitment of staff aligned to meeting the strategic priorities
• systematic monitoring and reviewing of policies and procedures and progress made towards most strategic goals.

ERO verified that evaluation practices require further improvement. Education managers are not yet undertaking systematic evaluation to understand their effectiveness and report on how change and improvement actions have impacted on desired outcomes for groups of learners and teaching practice. 

Conditions supporting leaders to build an effective team culture and ongoing growth include:

• modelling and expecting professional accountability and responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of children
• facilitating differentiated support that reflects the needs of teaching teams, children and the community. This includes, increased staffing allocations, contracting of external expertise and networking with wider community social agencies
• ensuring time and space is allocated for and enabling professional dialogue and learning focused collaboration. 

Well implemented quality systems, processes and practices for accountability and improvement include:

• providing clear guidance, resources, and expectations to support curriculum delivery
• leading teachers and teams across the organisation to inquire into practice and engage in professional learning and growth cycles that build teaching practices
• monitoring and building capability in relation to maintaining regulatory and professional requirements. 

There is a purposeful approach to promoting ongoing improvement for groups of learners including Māori, children with additional learning needs and children under three years old. Developing an organisation wide strategy to further enable success for learners of Pacific heritage would be beneficial.

Current priorities that the organisation is working towards include:

• consolidation of change and increased alignment across Waikato Kindergarten Association and Early Education Waikato 
• continuous implementation of the bicultural improvement journey that includes a policy and procedure bicultural audit, strengthening engagement with mana whenua and continued capability building to sustain improvements.

4 Summary of findings from visits to services

ERO visited a sample of 11 kindergartens to verify what Waikato 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. 

Organisational and learning conditions that promote positive outcomes for children include:

• teachers working with parents and whānau to develop relationships and learning focused partnerships to collaboratively enhance children’s learning
• opportunities during everyday learning experiences for children to hear and use te reo Māori and tikanga Māori specific to local iwi
• inclusive learning environments and teaching practices that respond to and support the specific needs of children under three years of age 
• effective processes and teaching practices that enable children with additional learning needs to access, participate and be included in the curriculum
• teaching practices that promote and prioritise children’s developing social competence and emotional wellbeing
• assessment, planning and evaluation of children’s learning that is focused on children’s interests, affirms their learner identity and is underpinned by the learning outcomes of Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum
• well-resourced learning environments that facilitate children’s curiosity, engagement, and agency.

Teaching teams are well supported by education managers to progress their improvement journey and enact association expectations. Education managers know about the capability and variation of teaching and evaluation practices at each kindergarten. They take deliberate steps to differentiate support that they provide to build service leadership and teaching capability.

Education managers have provided guidance and access to resources to enable teachers to work with their communities to define their localised curriculum and priorities for learning. This practice is not yet consistent across all the kindergarten’s sampled. 

5 Improvement actions

Prior to the next ERO evaluation Waikato Kindergarten Association will progress the following actions through its Quality Improvement Planning: 

• developing a Pacific strategy to build teacher capability and more effectively respond to learning outcomes for children of Pacific heritage, their families and communities
• Education managers to provide targeted support for teaching teams to develop and implement a localised curriculum and better define each service’s priorities for learning 
• strengthen the education managers and leadership teams' evaluation practices to undertake systematic evaluation at leadership level to better understand effectiveness and impact on teaching practices and desired outcomes for learners and report the findings to the board to inform priorities. 

6 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

As part of this review, a representative of Waikato 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 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)

12 February 2024 

8 About the Governing Organisation 

9 List of sampled services

All sampled services are on a full licence.

Services sampled in this evaluation: