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In a scan of the current landscape, Cooper highlights the increasing participation of infants and toddlers in early learning settings, ongoing concerns about the quality of provision for infants and toddlers, and a reported lack of cultural responsiveness in many settings.

In this paper, Timperley begins by discussing the very limited nature of the research literature relating to the impacts of external reviews, adding that this has done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for them or to slow their spread. Nearly every educational jurisdiction that has an external review system mixes both accountability and improvement purposes, setting up an inherent tension.

In this paper, the author describes how the current widespread interest in indicators of education quality is the result of three converging strands: school effectiveness research, school improvement research, and information technology. From the beginning there has been a tension between the use of indicators for accountability and improvement purposes; where the balance is struck significantly influences the indicators themselves, how they are organised in domains, and how they are used in practice.

In this paper Glasgow brings a Pacific voice to the debate about how the indicators should be revised. She argues that the care and education of young children has become infused with western, middle- class values and ideologies, institutionalised, normative, and separated from relationships and contexts. Following widespread consultation there was an expectation that Te Whāriki (1996) would directly speak to the needs of Pacific peoples, but this did not happen.

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Resources to support evaluation for improvement in early childhood services

Wylie reports that there is very little research on the relationship between school governance and student learning. She suggests two reasons for this: (i) governance boards are not an essential feature of effective schools and (ii) it can be hard to separate the contribution of boards from that of school leaders, particularly where a board is school- based.

In this paper, Robinson discusses the inherent tension between evaluation for accountability and evaluation for improvement. As a means of managing this tension, the links between the two are often kept loose. The downside of this is that the school and external reviewers often end up evaluating different things instead of discussing why their judgments are at variance.

In her introduction, Thornton says that there is a lack of empirical research focused on effective leadership practice in early childhood education. This mirrors a silence on the subject in the original Te Whāriki (1996).

In her introduction, Berryman offers a brief critique of the current set of evaluation indicators and their framing. While broadly approving, she expresses concern that the relational and dynamic nature of the Dimension 6 indicators is not made explicit. Even more fundamental, although the document references the Treaty of Waitangi in the Introduction, the wording casts Māori in a recipient role rather than as one of two equals in a partnership.

The Education Review Office (ERO)'s Strategic Intentions sets out our objectives and how ERO contributes to the Government's priorities for education.