Minerva House

1 ERO’s Judgements

Akarangi | Quality Evaluation evaluates the extent to which this early childhood service has the learning and organisational conditions to support equitable and excellent outcomes for all learners. Te Ara Poutama Indicators of quality for early childhood education: what matters most are the basis for making judgements about the effectiveness of the service in achieving equity and excellence for all learners. Judgements are made in relation to the Outcomes Indicators, Learning and Organisational Conditions. The Evaluation Judgement Rubric derived from the indicators, is used to inform ERO’s judgements about this service’s performance in promoting equity and excellence.

ERO’s judgements for Minerva House are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Minerva House is a privately owned early childhood education service. It serves a culturally diverse community. Children learn and play in three separate age-based rooms. Most staff are qualified teachers. Some progress has been made on addressing the key next step from the 2021 ERO report in relation to celebrating children’s language, culture, and identity in assessment documentation.

3 Summary of findings

Children experience respectful, friendly relationships with their teachers and are highly engaged in their chosen learning. They play cooperatively in small groups and alongside others, in purposefully resourced learning environments. Infants and toddlers learn in an unhurried environment and are nurtured by attentive adults. Children with additional needs are well supported to achieve their goals.

Most teaching practice aligns with the centre’s philosophy which includes aspects of Montessori approaches and the service’s valued learning priorities for children. Teachers use positive language to guide and encourage children’s participation and task completion. They intentionally support children’s growing social competence by using thoughtfully planned teaching strategies. Children have some opportunities to hear and use te reo me ngā tikanga Māori. Further work is required in this area.

Leaders and teachers are continuing to explore ways to use the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, to assess and plan for children’s learning progress over time. There are some inconsistencies in the quality of individual children’s assessment and planning, and in group planning. The documentation does not yet consistently show the intended learning and each child’s language, culture, and learner identity. The service is continuing to explore and establish genuine opportunities to independently revisit their learning.

Service leaders deliberately promote individual and centre wide professional learning and development opportunities to build teachers’ capability and professional practice. They collaboratively use systematic internal evaluation to focus on changes for improvement. However, internal evaluation could focus more intentionally on how chosen changes impact on outcomes for learners. Those responsible for governance and management plan strategically to set, monitor and achieve the service's priorities. They allocate resources that align to the centre's philosophy, vision, and values.

4 Improvement actions

Minerva House will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning. These are to:

• deliberately plan to build the capability of all teachers to use and integrate te reo me ngā tikanga Māori to enable a rich bicultural curriculum that fosters educational success for Māori, and all children

• further examine the use of learning outcomes from Te Whāriki in association with whānau, to show children’s achievement and progress over time in relation to these outcomes in assessment records

• establish clear expectations that include how teachers will acknowledge and respond to each child’s language, culture, and learner identity in their assessment and planning for learning documentation

• continue to investigate, and then implement, ways children can independently access their learning records to revisit their learning over time.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Minerva House completed an ERO Centre Assurance Statement and Self-Audit Checklist. In these documents they attested that they have taken all reasonable steps to meet their legal obligations related to:

• curriculum

• premises and facilities

• health and safety practices

• governance, management, and administration.

During the review, ERO looked at the service’s systems for managing the following 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; hygiene; excursion policies and procedures)

• suitable staffing (including qualification levels; police vetting; teacher registration; ratios)

• evacuation procedures and practices for fire and earthquake.

All early childhood services are required to promote children's health and safety and to regularly review their compliance with legal requirements.

Dr Lesley Patterson
Director Review and Improvement Services (Southern)
Southern Region | Te Tai Tini

24 August 2022 

6 About the Early Childhood Service