Ruru House Limited

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 Ruru House Limited are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Ruru House Limited is a privately owned, purpose-built service located in a rural setting in Taranaki. The owner is supported by a recently appointed curriculum leader and two established team leaders. Since the 2020 review, there have been a number of changes to the teaching team. A quarter of enrolled children are Māori. 

3 Summary of findings

An inclusive, purposefully-designed curriculum supports children to become confident and competent learners who demonstrate a good sense of belonging. Teachers work in partnership with parents and whānau to support children’s developing social competence and emotional wellbeing. The learning environment encourages critical thought, wondering and creativity that challenges children to explore in a nature-based playscape. Teachers effectively engage with whānau to remove barriers and enable all children to participate fully in the curriculum alongside their peers.

Infants and toddlers experience a responsive curriculum where care is understood to be integral to their learning and wellbeing. Teachers are highly attuned to these younger children's communication cues.

Further work is required, to build a culturally responsive curriculum that enables Māori children to succeed as Māori and that supports each child to be confident in his or her own culture.

Leaders continue to develop and implement planning and assessment guidelines to support teachers to effectively plan for learning. While children's learning dispositions are highly evident, the learning outcomes in Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, are yet to be made clearly visible in individual children’s learning journals. 

Those responsible for governance and management are improvement focused. Resources clearly align with the philosophy, vision and goals for learning. Leaders and teachers collaboratively engage in relevant professional learning, including building their understanding of te ao Māori. Self-review for improvement is ongoing. Further building leadership capability to effectively mentor teachers to critique their practice is required. Better implementation of aspects of health and safety is also required.

4 Improvement actions

Ruru House Limited will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• Intentionally use Te Whāriki learning outcomes, to show individual children’s learning and progress through their assessment and planning documentation.
• Integrate children’s cultures, languages and identity through individual’s learning journals, and the enacted curriculum.
• Build leadership capability to:
• provide teachers with targeted feedback about their practice in relation to new learning that has occurred
• identify what is working or not, and for which child or groups of children. 

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Ruru House Limited completed an ERO 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; safety checking; teacher registration; ratios)
• relevant evacuation procedures and practices.

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

6 Actions for Compliance 

Since the onsite visit the service has provided ERO with evidence that shows it has addressed the following areas of non-compliance:

• Consistently carrying out each type of emergency drill with children (as appropriate) on at least a three-monthly basis (HS8).
• Having parental permission and approval of adult: child ratios for special excursions (HS17).

Patricia Davey
Director of Early Childhood Education (ECE)

20 November 2023

7 About the Early Childhood Service