New Shoots Children's Centre - Coatesville

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 - Coatesville 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, and a centre director leads the teaching team. A small number of enrolled children identify as Māori. This is ERO’s first evaluation of the service that opened in November 2022. 

3 Summary of findings

Children’s learning and development is supported by caring relationships with adults. Children up to the age of three years are well engaged in a play-based curriculum that actively promotes their physical wellbeing and developing understandings of how to interact positively with others. Older children’s oral language and opportunities to develop their thinking about the world around them, are promoted through intentional teaching practices. 

Children’s transitions into, through and out of the service onto school are well supported. Well-resourced learning environments promote children’s independence and decision-making. Children with additional learning needs are supported to achieve their individual goals through secure partnerships with parents and external agencies.

Teaching strategies that are responsive to Māori children are at the beginning stages of being included in the curriculum. Leaders acknowledge the need to further strengthen teachers’ shared understandings of cultural practices for Māori and children of diverse ethnicities. 

Teachers and leaders share their learning and actively contribute to each other’s professional growth. Practices for teacher inquiry, reflection and review are being established within the new teaching team to better contribute to children’s learning and the service’s improvement goals. There is variable use of the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, in planning and assessment documentation. Teaching teams in some rooms demonstrate a more in-depth understanding. 

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 - Coatesville will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• Continue to build a culturally responsive curriculum in partnership with whānau, children and teachers.
• Grow leaders and teachers shared understanding of how to use the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki to better contribute to curriculum planning, assessment and evaluation processes.

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 - Coatesville 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