Montessori House Atelier de Bambini

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 Akarangi Quality 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 Montessori House Atelier de Bambini are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Montessori House Atelier de Bambini provides education and care for children aged over two years. The owner is the director, and with the head teacher, manages day-to-day operations and oversees teaching and learning. This is the first Akarangi review for this service since opening in 2019.

3 Summary of findings

Children benefit from a very well-resourced curriculum that is consistent with Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum and the Montessori approach. Children are well supported to build a secure sense of belonging and to become very socially competent. Children show sustained interest in language rich conversations and activities. There are some, but not sufficient, opportunities for children to hear and use te reo Māori and learn about Māori culture.

Leaders and teachers are embedding recent changes to how they assess and plan for individual children’s learning. The service is becoming increasingly intentional in using the learning outcomes in Te Whāriki, when planning for and evaluating children’s progress with their learning. Recent learning records respond to parents’ aspirations for their child’s learning and make their progress more visible. Individual plans often have multiple goals, learning outcomes and strategies and due to their complexity do not give clear guidance to teachers and parents.

Leaders and teachers work collaboratively to plan for children’s learning and support each other’s ongoing professional learning. Evaluation of aspects of teaching has resulted in improved practices. However, there is variable understanding of internal evaluation as a tool to guide improvement. There was insufficient gathering of information to inform past evaluations and valued outcomes need to be more child centred.

Overall, the service is well governed and managed. Easy to follow policies and procedures, contribute in most cases to sound implementation of health and safety practices. Leaders have developed a three-year plan that outlines planned improvements but have yet to collaborate with teachers to develop and implement this and more detailed annual plans, to increase the likelihood of achieving these goals.

4 Improvement actions

Montessori House Atelier de Bambini will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning. These are to:

• refine and embed recent assessment and planning processes, so that there is a manageable number of goals and clear links from these to the most relevant learning outcome and teaching strategies

• consistently integrate meaningful te reo and te ao Māori so that all children experience a rich bicultural curriculum

• deepen leaders’ and teachers’ understanding of internal evaluation to better identify what is going well, what could be better and appropriate improvement actions

• involve all staff in the development of improvement action plans (such as, strategic plans), that have a manageable number of goals, are explicit about what and how changes are to be implemented, and at a later stage, more thoroughly evaluate the impact of changes made for children.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Montessori House Atelier de Bambini 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.

6 Actions for Compliance

ERO identified the following area of non-compliance:

• when children leave the premises on regular excursions, an assessment and management of risk is undertaken, and the excursion is approved by the Person Responsible.

[Licensing Criteria for Early Childhood Education and Care Centres 2008, HS17].

7 Recommendation to Ministry of Education

ERO recommends the Ministry follows up with the service provider to ensure non-compliances identified in this report are addressed.

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

19 May 2022 

8 About the Early Childhood Service