Our research

Early childhood education services had to quickly adapt to changing requirements and periods of uncertainty due to Covid-19 in 2020. ERO undertook work to understand how this affected early childhood education services. This report presents our findings on how Covid-19 impacted children, whānau and services, how services responded and what they learnt, and the challenges that services expect they might face in future alert level changes.

Te Pou Mataaho, ERO’s evaluation and research group, and Te Uepū ā Motu, ERO’s national evaluation and review team, pursued this evaluation to provide an evidence base about the initial impacts of Covid-19 on Māori-medium education and how the sector responded.

I whāia tēnei arotake e Te Pou Mataaho, te rōpū arotake, rangahau hoki a Te Tari Arotake Mātauranga me Te Uepū ā-Motu, te rōpū arotake ā-motu a Te Tari Arotake Mātauranga, ki te whakaputa i tētahi kohinga taunakitanga e kitea ai ngā pānga tōmua o te Mate Korona ki te rāngai mātauranga reo Māori, me ngā rautaki i whāia ai e taua rāngai.

This short guide is for early childhood education leaders and kaiako. It covers what we found from talking to services in 2020 about the impact of Covid-19, and shares strategies used by services to respond to the challenges they faced. It also sets out some actions that could be considered for continuing to support children, parents, whānau and staff in 2021.

In Aotearoa, Māori-medium education experienced significant disruption when the outbreak of Covid-19 forced kura to close their doors, and whānau and kaiako to adjust to home schooling and distance learning. Among the many challenges were access to technology and resources with Māori communities among the most affected.

I Aotearoa nei, i tino raru te rāngai mātauranga reo Māori i te horapatanga o te Mate Korona, i kati ai ngā tatau o ngā kura, i mate ai hoki ngā whānau me ngā kaiako ki te tīni i ā rātou mahi ki te whakaako ki te kāinga me te ako tawhiti.

Ko tētahi raru i roto i te huhua, ko te korenga o ngā taputapu matihiko me ngā rauemi, ka mutu ko ngā hapori Māori ērā i rongo i te korekore rawa atu nei.

This report highlights how early childhood services keep up to date with changing regulations and legal requirements in order to effectively manage for children’s safety and wellbeing.

The intent of the evaluation was to gain an insight and understanding of literacy teaching and learning in early childhood education. This report complements the ERO national evaluation report, Literacy in Early Childhood: Teaching and Learning, February 2011. It presents examples of good practice from 13 early childhood services, identified during their ERO reviews, which had high quality literacy teaching and learning. ERO revisited these services in Term 4, 2010. These services were at different stages in their understanding and associated literacy teaching and learning practices.

ERO evaluated literacy teaching and learning in early childhood services in Term 4, 2009 and Term 1, 2010.