New Shoots Children's Centre - Ramarama

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 New Shoots Children’s Centre - Ramarama are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

This service is part of the New Shoots Children’s Centre group. Children play and learn in one of five rooms, sharing an outdoor playground. A governance team guides centre operations. A centre director leads a large teaching team. Serving a multicultural community, approximately ten percent of children identify as Māori and ten percent as Pacific. This is the first ERO review of this service which opened in 2022.

3 Summary of findings

Children experience a curriculum that fosters positive relationships and enhances their emotional and social wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Responsive teacher practices and community connections support children to transition into, within and from the service onto school. 

Infants and toddlers experience calm and well-paced teacher interactions that support their learning and development. Well-resourced learning environments support older children’s complex learning, emerging literacy and numeracy, and thinking skills. Children are empowered to make choices and decisions.

Learning-focused partnerships with families support the regular sharing of children’s learning with teachers. Identified barriers to some children’s learning and progress are reduced through intentional teaching practices. Teachers document assessment information that consistently shows children’s progress and ways of learning against valued learning outcomes.

Culturally responsive teaching practices are being established. Some strategies are in place to support children who speak English as an additional language. A range of cultural celebrations are observed as part of the curriculum. Daily bicultural experiences for children include waiata, variable teacher use of te reo Māori, and elements of tikanga Māori practices. Ways of knowing, being and doing for children of Pacific heritages are yet to be reflected in the curriculum or teaching practice.

Capable leadership is resulting in the conditions enabling improvement to be embedded. Relational trust at all levels supports collaboration within an established teaching team. Systems for evaluation usefully focus on improving teaching practices and supporting children’s learning. Improvements in teacher practices are evident and contribute to positive learning outcomes for different age groups of children. 

Effective, improvement-focused governance and management processes include a well-considered strategic plan and relevant systems that intentionally guide improvement across the New Shoots group. Resources are purposefully allocated to achieve identified priorities for children’s learning. Collaborative, targeted, ongoing professional learning builds leaders’ and teachers’ capabilities. Successful initiatives support children to access an inclusive curriculum. 

4 Improvement actions

New Shoots Children’s Centre - Ramarama will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• Increase the extent to which information documented about children’s learning reflects their home contexts and cultural identities.
• Increase opportunities for all parents and whānau to contribute culturally valued knowledge and skills to curriculum experiences and design.

The New Shoots governance group has indicated it will include the following in its Quality Improvement Planning, to ensure that all services are working at a consistent level:

• Provide support for service leaders to build teachers’ collective capability and shared understandings of using all aspects of effective evaluation to guide improvement. 

 5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of New Shoots Children’s Centre - Ramarama 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.

Patricia Davey
Director of Early Childhood Education (ECE)

4 June 2024 

6 About the Early Childhood Service