Provincial Education Group Limited

Here is the latest report for the Governing Organisation that this service is part of.

1 ERO’s Judgements

A Governing Organisation Evaluation evaluates the extent to which organisational conditions support equitable and excellent outcomes for all learners in the organisation’s services. Te Ara Poutama- indicators of quality for early childhood education: what matters most is the basis for making judgements about its effectiveness. The Governing Organisation Quality Evaluation Judgement Rubric derived from the indicators, is used to inform the ERO’s judgements about this organisation’s performance.

ERO’s judgement for Provincial Education Group Limited is as follows:

ERO’s judgement Organisational Conditions

The organisation conditions encompass Ngā Akatoro | Domains of:

• Ngā Aronga Whai Hua | Evaluation for improvement
• Kaihautū | Leadership fosters collaboration and improvement
• Te Whakaruruhau | Stewardship through effective governance and management

2 Context of the Governing Organisation

Provincial Education Group Limited is a national early childhood organisation currently comprised of 77 centre-based services across New Zealand. At the time of this evaluation all services were on a full licence and governance was in the process of changing their name to Busy Bees Aotearoa. The organisation has delegated management responsibility to the senior leadership team. Members of this team and the regional managers provide operational and curriculum leadership to services. Provincial Education Group Limited has experienced a period of significant growth.

Findings from ERO’s evaluation at the governance and organisational level included evaluating the extent to which Provincial Education Group Limited’s strategic intentions, quality improvement systems, processes and practices support the provision of a quality curriculum at individual service level.

3 Summary of findings

Conditions supporting the organisation to build an effective culture include:

• a clear mission, vision and set of values that provide a sense of purpose throughout the organisation
• high levels of relational trust that enable collaboration within the organisation and purposeful connections across the services
• utilising individual staff strengths and experiences to foster a culture of collective responsibility
• well established lines of communication with centre managers and their staff.

Quality improvement systems, processes, and practices that the organisation has established include:

• useful induction processes and ongoing learning that builds shared knowledge, understandings, and skills
• leadership pathways and initiatives to promote sustainability, continuity, and succession planning in its services
• in-depth policy review
• a supportive mentoring and coaching process at service level to develop leadership and teacher capability
• a well-considered approach to integrating new services into the organisation.

Leaders have yet to develop a shared understanding of, and establish a formal process for, reliably identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement related to curriculum, teaching and learning. Establishing a formal process and using agreed indicators of quality practice would assist leaders to make consistent judgements about the quality and effectiveness of curriculum implementation and teaching practices.

Collective capability and capacity at all levels of the organisation to use internal evaluation is being established. Regular survey responses from parents provide leaders with a useful insight into parent perspectives on service delivery.

4 Summary of findings from visits to services

ERO visited a sample of nine services to verify what Provincial Education Group Limited knows about the quality of each of the services’ learning conditions and to what extent the organisational conditions support service improvement. ERO selected the service sample in consultation with the governing organisation.

Organisational conditions that promote positive teaching and learning environments include:

• supportive relationships between staff, children, parents and whānau
• an established culture of collaboration within and across the services
• useful mentoring and professional learning and development to improve practice.

Good practices for all children that ERO identified at service level included:

• being well supported to succeed through a collaborative planned approach to their learning and wellbeing particularly children with additional learning requirements
• having many opportunities to be involved in learning that reflects their interests
• infants and toddlers experiencing warm, responsive relationships with teachers who work in partnership with families and whānau to meet daily requirements.

The capability to develop a curriculum that supports Māori learners to succeed as Māori is limited to the expertise of individual services. Cultural knowledge and understanding of the provision of a curriculum that supports children of Pacific heritage and their families and communities is variable.

A greater level of guidance is required from leaders for high quality curriculum implementation. Assessment, planning, processes and practices reflect the strands and goals of Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum. There is limited use of the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki to determine children’s progress of learning over time. There is variability in teachers understanding and use of intentional teaching practices.

The organisation has identified and ERO affirmed through the evaluation that localised curriculum is an area for development in services.

5 Improvement actions

Prior to the next ERO evaluation, Provincial Education Group Limited will progress the following actions through its Quality Improvement Planning:

Organisational leaders to develop shared curriculum expectations that are consistent with the depth and breadth of Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum. This should include a stronger focus on:

• clarity of key priorities for children’s learning in partnership with parents and whānau
• greater acknowledgement of Māori as tangata whenua and the educational aspirations of Māori and Pacific peoples
• the implementation of a bicultural curriculum
• guidance for intentional high-quality teaching for equity of learner outcomes
• implementing regular review and evaluation of the curriculum.

6 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

As part of this review, a representative of Provincial Education Group Limited completed an ERO Governing Organisation Assurance Statement and Self-Audit Checklist. In these documents they stated that the organisation has the systems, processes, and practices to be assured that service providers for licensed services within the organisation are meeting legal requirements related to:

• curriculum
• premises and facilities
• health and safety practices
• governance, management, and administration.

The licensed service provider/s of the sampled services listed at the end of this report also completed an ERO Assurance Statement and Self-Audit Checklist for their service. In these documents they attested that they have taken all reasonable steps to meet legal requirements, including those detailed in Ministry of Education Circulars and other documents, related to these areas.

All early childhood services are required to promote children's health and safety and to regularly review their compliance with legal requirements.

During its visits to sample services ERO identified the following non-compliances:

Non-compliances

Patricia Davey
Director of Early Childhood Education (ECE)

20 September 2023 

 7 About the Governing Organisation

8 List of sampled services

All sampled services are on a full licence.

Services sampled in this evaluation: