What Governing Organisations need to know
As a Governing Organisation, a review is an opportunity to understand what is working well across your network of services, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate how your organisation supports positive outcomes for children and mokopuna. This section explains what to expect and how to prepare.
While every review is tailored to the context of your prganisation and services, most reviews follow the same pathway.
Notification | Preparing for review | Review activity | After the review |
ERO notifies the Governing Organisation and selected services that a review is taking place. | Governing Organisations and selected services prepare for the review and provide information requested by ERO. | ERO reviews documents, undertakes the Governing Organisation review, and visits a sample of services. | ERO shares the review findings, publishes a report, and organisations and services use the findings to support improvement |
How Governing Organisations can prepare for their review
Preparing for a review is an opportunity to reflect on how effectively your organisation supports quality education and care across its services, and how well your systems and processes contribute to positive 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.
As part of your preparation, we recommend that you:
Action | Requirement |
Complete and return the requested review documents | Required |
Gather key organisational documents and information | Recommended |
Reflect on what your organisation knows about the quality, performance and outcomes of the services it oversees | Recommended |
Read your notification email in full, and contact us with any questions | Recommended |
Complete and return the requested review documents | Required
Download, fill in and return the documents below:
The assurance statement and self-audit checklist provides information about how your organisation monitors and maintains compliance with regulatory requirements across the services it oversees.
The Governing Organisation profile helps the review team understand your organisation's size, structure and operating context so that review activity can be appropriately focused.
Gather key organisational documents and information | Recommended
You may wish to gather information that helps demonstrate how your organisation supports quality, compliance and continuous improvement across its network of services. This could include:
strategic plans and priorities
reports on progress against strategic goals
organisation-wide quality assurance and improvement reports
recent internal evaluations and their findings
reports provided to governance, leadership or management teams.
Reflect on monitoring, improvement and outcome | Recommended
Review teams are interested in understanding what your organisation knows about the services it oversees, and how that information is used to support improvement.
You may find it helpful to consider:
what you know about the quality and performance of your services
how you monitor quality and support continuous improvement across your network
how you identify and respond to risks, concerns and areas requiring support
how your strategic priorities contribute to better outcomes for children and mokopuna
how your policies, systems and processes support services to meet regulatory requirements.
What happens during Governing Organisation review process
Governing Organisation reviews combine information gathered from the organisation itself with evidence from a sample of services. This helps ERO understand how organisational systems, leadership and support are working in practice.
The review has two connected parts:
the first part focuses on ERO reviewing the Governing Organisation and how effectively it supports quality education and care, continuous improvement, and compliance across its services.
the second part focuses on ERO reviewing a sample of services, allowing our team to verify and validate what the Governing Organisation knows about the quality, performance and needs of the services it oversees and how it is using that information to inform improvements. Which you can read about here.
ERO Reviewers will work with governance, senior leaders and those responsible for supporting services across your organisation.
During the Governing Organisation review, ERO review activity will focus on:
systems, processes and practices for managing and maintaining compliance with the regulatory standards
the organisation’s strategic initiatives and priorities and what you know about your services and communities
meeting with those responsible for governance and management, and personnel who support services to improve teaching and learning.
The frameworks that guide our reviews
During the review process we will use Te Ara Poutama, and the ECE Improvement Framework to guide our work.
Te Ara Poutama: Indicators of Quality for Early Childhood Education | ECE Improvement Framework |
The indicators describe the practices and conditions that contribute to positive outcomes for children and support high-quality education and care. | The framework helps organisations understand the difference between foundational practice and practice excellence and supports continuous quality improvement. |
As part of the review, ERO also visits a sample of services your Governing Organisation oversees.
These visits help verify and validate what the governing organisation knows about the quality of education and care, compliance, curriculum implementation and improvement priorities across its services.
During service visits, ERO may meet with service leaders, managers and kaiako, observe teaching and learning and review documentation.
What happens if ERO identifies significant non-compliance or issues during a governing organisation service review?
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 through reviews helps ERO understand how effectively governing organisations support their services, meet regulatory requirements, manage risk, and promote high-quality education and care.
Where significant concerns are identified within a service, ERO may undertake an Assurance Review of that service. Where concerns relate to systems, practices, or issues across multiple services, ERO may undertake an Assurance Review of the governing organisation.
We may also undertake additional monitoring, regulatory activity, or follow-up engagement where required.
By bringing together information from both reviews and regulatory activity, ERO can build a more complete picture of how governing organisations support quality, compliance, improvement, and positive outcomes across the services they oversee.
ERO recognises that Governing Organisations and the services they oversee are focused on achieving high-quality outcomes for children and mokopuna. Alongside this commitment to quality, they play an important role in ensuring services meet regulatory requirements and provide safe, supportive learning environments. If Governing Organisation leaders, or service team members have questions, or concerns about safety, wellbeing or compliance with regulatory requirements you can visit this section for more information and find links for incident report guides.
ERO also welcomes contact with our complaints, incidents and enforcement team, you can find relevant information on our contact page.