What Governing Organisation services need to know

For teachers, kaiako, educators, managers and all the people who work every day to support children's learning and wellbeing, a review is an opportunity to share your service's strengths, reflect on your improvement journey, and demonstrate the difference you make for children and mokopuna.

If your service is part of a Governing Organisation that oversees 10 or more early learning services, ERO may select your service as part of a review sample. Service reviews help ERO understand how effectively the Governing Organisation supports quality education and care across its network of services and provide evidence about how well organisational systems, processes and improvement strategies are working in practice.

If your service is selected to be reviewed, you can expect the following to take place:

How Services Can Prepare for Their Review

Preparing for a review is an opportunity to reflect on what is working well, identify areas for improvement, and ensure you have a clear understanding of how your service supports positive learning, development and wellbeing outcomes for children and mokopuna.

The notification email you receive from ERO will include information about the review process, key dates, requested information, and resources to help you prepare.

Complete and return the requested review documents | Required

• Centre Assurance Statement and Self-Audit Checklists - Te Ara Whānui if you are a centre or service.

• Home-based Education and Care Assurance Statement and Self-Audit Checklist if you are a home-based service

These documents provide information about how your service monitors and maintains compliance with regulatory requirements.

• Statistical Profile of an Early Childhood Service for all services. This profile helps the review team understand your service's operating context and focus review activities appropriately.

Gather key service documents and information | Recommended

You may wish to gather information that helps demonstrate how your service supports children's learning, wellbeing and continuous improvement.

This could include:

• strategic and annual plan

• internal evaluation or self-review information

• recent quality improvement plans

• curriculum planning and assessment information

• reports shared with organisational leaders or governance groups

• evidence of progress against identified priorities.

Inform your team and community about the upcoming review | Recommended

We encourage you to let your service leaders, kaiako, educators and whānau know that ERO will be visiting your service as part of the Governing Organisation review.

To support this, we have prepared template letters you can use to share information with your team and community.

• Home-based letter to parents, whānau, kaiako and educators

• Centre-based letter to parents, whānau and kaiako

The service review forms part of a wider Governing Organisation evaluation. ERO uses information gathered at the organisational level alongside evidence collected from selected services to understand how effectively the Governing Organisation supports quality education and care across its network.

During the review, ERO may:

• meet with service leaders, managers, kaiako and educators

• observe teaching and learning

• review documentation and service information

• discuss improvement priorities and quality assurance processes

• speak with parents and whānau where appropriate

Review officers seek to understand:

• the quality of each service, particularly curriculum and identified improvement planning

• important aspects of compliance that have a potentially high impact on children's health and safety

• children's learning through the implementation of Te Whāriki and the service's curriculum.

During the review process we will use Te Ara Poutama, and the ECE Improvement Framework to guide our work.

From 1 September 2026, ERO's review and regulatory functions work together to support quality, safety and positive outcomes for children and mokopuna. Information gathered during reviews helps ERO understand how effectively services are meeting regulatory requirements, managing risk, and providing high-quality education and care

Most reviews focus on understanding what is working well, identifying opportunities for improvement, and supporting positive outcomes for children and mokopuna. Where significant concerns are identified, ERO may undertake additional review, monitoring, follow-up engagement or regulatory activity.

In some circumstances, ERO may undertake an Assurance Review to further assess concerns relating to a service's compliance with regulatory requirements or the health, safety and wellbeing of children.

By bringing together information from reviews and regulatory activity, ERO can build a more complete understanding of how services support children's learning, development, wellbeing and safety, and where additional support or action may be needed

If service providers, coordinators, visiting teachers, educators or leaders have questions or concerns about safety, wellbeing, or compliance with regulatory requirements, you can visit the managing an ECE section for more information. Parents and whānau can find specific information about complaints here. You can also contact the relevant team in ERO using the details on our contact page.