Tēnā Koutou Kātoa
Ngā mihi nui o te wā
Ko te Matariki pou rarama I te pō,
Ko Tumutumuwhenua pou whakairo i te awatea,
Kia māhuta o tātau tūmanako ki te tau.
It’s been a fast paced first half of 2024! Our reviewers have been busy reviewing services around the motu, enjoying connecting with kaiako in a variety of settings.
At ERO, we have taken some time in the early part of this year to reflect on our own review practices and to consider the feedback we have received from the sector. This is something we do regularly, to ensure that our reviews continue to focus on what matters most for children in services.
In our last newsletter, we signaled that we were refreshing some areas of our practice and processes. We are pleased to share more detail about these changes with you in today’s newsletter – which you might notice has also been refreshed, now known as “What Matters Most”.
While some of our review practices are changing, what remains the same is our commitment to our whakataukī, Ko te tamaiti te pūtake o te kaupapa: The child - the heart of the matter. We continue to place learners at the centre of all we do, working with you to ensure that every child, in every service, in every community, has access to excellent and equitable education experiences.
The Ministry for Regulation has announced a regulatory sector review into early childhood education. The review is to assess whether regulations are achieving appropriate outcomes for the sector and are improving outcomes for our children. You are encouraged to have your say. There’s more information about the review in this newsletter.
If you have any questions or feedback for ERO, in relation to our review work, please remember you can contact your review officer. You can also give feedback to ERO by completing the post-review questionnaire when your report is confirmed.
Ngā mihi,
Deborah Wood
Deputy Chief Executive
Review and improvement
What's in this newsletter:
What you can expect from an ERO review Our review practice Changes to our reviews from 22 July Introducing our refreshed review reports The Improvement Framework Ministry for Regulation: regulatory sector review into ECE Our evidence website and social media
What you can expect from an ERO review
In our December 2023 newsletter, we shared with you that we are making some adjustments to the way we review services, to ensure we’re getting to the heart of what matters most for children.
When your service is due for a visit from ERO, you’ll receive a notification from our team to inform you of an upcoming review.
When we arrive at your service, our initial focus is on checking for compliance in areas that have a potentially high impact on children's health, safety and wellbeing.
This includes:
- physical safety (including supervision, sleep procedures, accidents, medication, hygiene, excursion policies and procedures)
- emotional safety (including positive guidance and child protection)
- suitable staffing (including qualification levels, safety checking, teacher registration, ratios)
- relevant evacuation procedures and practices.
By having all your documentation ready for the ERO team to view, the time taken to assess compliance should be reduced.
In home-based services, we will undertake compliance verification visits in a sample of educator homes after the initial compliance check at service level. The review team will ask you to have samples of visiting teacher and educator information across all your home-based schemes/networks, which show how compliance checks are maintained and monitored.
Our review practice
We have made some changes to ensure that our review practices are increasingly consistent across the country.
To support this, we will be:
- where possible using the same review team where a service provider owns / operates more than one service
- developing and using internal tools and resources to support our reviewers and managers to make judgements.
While we aim for consistency, every review is a one-size-fits-one and reflects each individual service’s context.
You can expect the ERO review team to be on site at your service for a good amount of time over two days.
Changes to our reviews from 22 July
All ERO visits start with a focus on children’s health, safety and wellbeing. Once our reviewers are assured that your service does not meet the criteria for an Akanuku | Assurance Review, we will undertake an Akarangi | Quality Evaluation.
Akarangi | Quality Evaluation
This approach focuses on to what extent your service has the learning and organisational conditions to support equitable and excellent outcomes for all learners.
In an Akarangi | Quality Evaluation we are interested in:
- what you know about children’s learning including in relation to the learning outcomes in Te Whāriki
- what you know about the learning and development of Māori children, children of Pacific heritage, children with additional learning needs and children up to the age of three in your service
- what your priorities are for children’s learning and why you’re focusing on these priorities
- what you know about how well your learning and organisational conditions are enabling (or hindering) equitable and excellent outcomes for all children, using Te Ara Poutama and the Improvement Framework for teacher-led services
- what your current improvement focus/foci are and how and why did you determine these.
Any issues with compliance identified during an Akarangi | Quality Evaluation will be reported as areas of concern.
Akanuku | Assurance Review
In these reviews, we look more closely at whether your service is meeting and maintaining the four regulatory standards and licensing criteria for:
- curriculum
- premises and facilities
- health and safety
- governance, management and administration.
Akanuku | Assurance Reviews will only be used in exceptional circumstances. We have developed criteria to guide our reviewers to determine if an Akanuku | Assurance Review is the best approach.
The Ministry of Education will determine if your service is compliant with the regulatory standards. ERO will no longer be recommending that the Ministry of Education reassess a service’s licence. We will revisit services that have an Akanuku | Assurance Review after three years.
Introducing our refreshed evaluation reports
We have made some changes to our review reports, which include clearer evaluative judgements. They provide services with a practical and actionable quality improvement plan that can be effectively monitored.
The reports will make it easier for parents to understand and make informed decisions about the education and care of their child.
The reports more clearly show our overall judgements in four domains | Ngā Akatoro:
- The learner and their learning | He Whāriki Motuhake
- Collaborative professional learning that builds knowledge and capability | Whakangungu Ngaio
- Leadership fosters collaboration and improvement | Kaihautū
- Stewardship through effective governance and management | Te Whakaruruhau.
Internal evaluation remains central to improvement and is reflected across all domains | Ngā Akatoro.
For each of these domains | Ngā Akatoro, we will make one of the following overall judgements:
- Improvement required
- Working towards
- Embedded
- Excelling.
These judgements are independent of each other, so a service could receive a spread of judgements across the domains | Ngā Akatoro. These provide a summary of where a service is at on their improvement journey.
The report will indicate whether the service is below or above the threshold for quality. This threshold is determined through the effective practices outlined for the process indicators in Te Ara Poutama: Indicators of quality and Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum.
We will also make a judgement about your service's progress on your improvement actions identified from ERO’s previous visit to your service, if applicable.
Children's health and safety concerns will not impact directly on the overall judgements and will be indicated in your report as either Improvement required or Taking reasonable steps.
If we identify a concern that is not an immediate or an unacceptable risk to children’s health and safety, this will be in your report. This information will be reported as an area of concern. ERO will no longer determine whether your service is compliant with regulatory standards after our onsite visit.
Akatea | Governing Organisation Evaluation reports
We have refreshed our reports for governing organisations. The new governing organisation reports are similar to the stand-alone service reports. The reports:
- clearly show our overall judgements relating to organisational conditions and learning conditions
- include the same overall judgements as stand-alone services: improvement required; working towards; embedded; and excelling
- indicate whether a governing organisation is below or above the threshold for quality
- make a judgement about an organisation’s progress on the improvement actions identified from ERO's previous visit, if applicable.
Children’s health and safety concerns will not impact directly on the overall judgements and will be reported as either Improvement required or Taking reasonable steps. If significant health and safety concerns are identified, then we may undertake an Akanuku | Assurance Review of the organisation using some of the sample services as verification.
Services sampled
We have developed a process for selecting services to sample as part of a governing organisation evaluation. If you have oversight of many services and this is ERO’s first review of your governing organisation, we may spend more time with you at the beginning of the review and sample a smaller group of services. Subsequent reviews are likely to have shorter front-end engagement with a larger service sample.
Lifting the quality of education and care
We want to provide support for services to improve the quality of education and care for all learners. Through our reviews and ERO resources and tools that have been developed to help you, we can work together to achieve better educational outcomes for children.
We want every service to provide learners with education and care above the quality threshold. Our revised overall judgements show whether your service is above or below the threshold for quality.
The Improvement Framework
We have developed an Improvement Framework for teacher-led services, which replaces the judgement rubric. The framework is focused on what will make the most difference for children. It outlines the practices from improvement required to excelling with well-defined expectations for demonstrable practice and will assist you to set priorities for your own quality improvement planning.
The framework draws on the quality practices outlined in Te Ara Poutama PIKE AKE, KAKE AKE Indicators of quality for early childhood education: what matters most and Te Whāriki the early childhood curriculum.
Next, we will develop an Improvement Framework for parent-led Playcentre services.
Ministry for Regulation: regulatory sector review into ECE
The Ministry for Regulation (MfR) is undertaking an Early Childhood Education regulatory review.
As part of the review, the MfR is engaging with organisations representing parents and families, teachers, workers and providers, as well as other agencies on the ECE regulatory review.
The MfR has a new engagement hub, where you can provide feedback on the ECE regulatory review. You can complete the online questionnaire, provide a written submission or do both. You can share the link to the engagement hub with your networks, and those who you consider will be interested in having their say and providing feedback on the ECE regulatory review.
There will be a translation of the ECE regulatory review questionnaire available on the engagement hub in te reo Māori as soon as possible.
The ECE regulatory review will be complete by the end of this year.
Our evidence website and social media
We also regularly share news, links, and sneak peeks through our dedicated research social media accounts. Look for ‘Te Ihuwaka Education Evaluation Centre’ on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
For more information about ERO and our mahi please visit ero.govt.nz
To be added to our mailing list for this newsletter, please email us at ricomms@ero.govt.nz