We do an Assurance Review | Akanuku of your service when:
- Half or more of the licensing criteria or regulation ERO has checked indicate a systemic failure and one or more of the following criteria is also evident.
- The assurance statement(s) indicates a limited understanding of the full licensing criteria.
- There has been considerable turnover in teachers and / or leaders.
- The ERO report history indicates that this service has not maintained compliance with regulatory standards.
What we focus on
In an Akanuku | Assurance Review we focus on whether your service meets and maintains the four regulatory standards and licensing criteria for:
- Curriculum
- Premises and facilities
- Health and safety
- Governance, management and administration.
We also look at how your service manages areas that have a potentially high impact on children’s wellbeing:
- emotional safety (including positive guidance and child protection)
- physical safety (including supervision; sleep procedures; accidents; medication; excursion policies and procedures)
- suitable staffing (qualification levels, safety checking of staff, ratios)
- relevant evacuation procedures and practices.
What we assess your service against
Akanuku | Assurance Reviews use the regulatory framework and licensing criteria to review your service.
See the regulatory framework and licensing criteria on the Ministry of Education’s website.
Gathering evidence in an Akanuku | Assurance Review
Our reviewers gather and record evidence from:
- discussions with people involved with the service
- observations of the curriculum in action — including teaching practice, the environment and resources
- any additional documents.
We then consider the evidence to determine our judgements about compliance.
We discuss what we are finding with you
We discuss what we are finding with your key staff. Key staff include the service provider and anyone else responsible for taking action as a result of our review.
We discuss with you any areas we have identified where your service doesn’t meet regulatory standards or licensing criteria.
We write our draft report
We report on your service’s compliance with the regulatory standards.
The draft report includes a judgement for each of the four regulatory standards that tells you which of the following regulatory standards you are not meeting:
- Curriculum
- Premises and facilities
- Health and safety
- Governance, management and administration.
The report may recommend the Ministry of Education follows up with you to ensure that identified non-compliances are addressed promptly.
You give feedback on the draft report
We send you the draft report within two weeks of completing our review.
You have 10 working days from the date we email the draft report to tell us in writing about any errors of fact. ERO will not consider any evidence related to addressing non-compliances in the draft report. Non-compliances identified while ERO was onsite remain in the report.
We’ll consider your response. If the evidence of any factual errors justifies a change, we’ll update the report.
We publish the report
We confirm the report and email a copy to you within two weeks.
We publish the report on our website two weeks after we email you the confirmed report.
The audience for ERO reports includes the public, parents and whānau, the Government and people in the early childhood education sector.
What happens after the review
You will need to work with the Ministry of Education if your service does not meet one or more of the regulatory standards and we have made a recommendation to the Ministry to follow up with you.
You can give us feedback about your review
We’re interested in your experience of the review. Please take the time to complete our Akanuku questionnaire online.