149 Cascades Road, Pakuranga, Auckland
View on mapAkarangi | 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 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 New Shoots Children’s Centre - Pakuranga are as follows:
Outcome Indicators(What the service knows about outcomes for learners) |
Whakaū Embedding |
Ngā Akatoro Domains |
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Learning ConditionsOrganisational Conditions |
Whakaū Embedding Whakaū Embedding |
New Shoots Children’s Centre - Pakuranga is one of 17 services under the same ownership. Three co-owners oversee service operations and provide governance support. A qualified centre director leads a team of 17 qualified teachers and 23 unqualified staff, including a housekeeper and a cook. A small number of children attending have Māori heritage. Staff reflect the diverse cultures of the children enrolled.
Children work independently or play in groups for sustained periods of time. Children have good opportunities to develop their oral language and to understand centre routines. A shared outdoor playground supports children’s developing social competence and friendships between older and younger children. A Forrest Kindy programme is a feature of the service’s curriculum. This programme offers children opportunities to build confidence and resilience through exploration of the natural world.
Good teacher to child ratios support a calm environment. These ratios enable nurturing relationships, particularly between teachers and younger children, and consistent support for children with additional learning needs. Transition between rooms is carefully managed. Teachers work together to ensure children’s needs are met. This helps children to build their sense of belonging.
Bicultural practices are intentionally woven into the philosophy and teaching practices, providing good opportunities for children to learn basic te reo Māori and aspects of tikanga Māori. Learning-focused partnerships support parents to participate in the curriculum. The languages and cultures of individual children could be made more visible in documentation and the environment.
Leaders promote teachers’ shared understanding of quality practices through access to professional development courses, staff meetings and ongoing mentoring. Teachers are provided with relevant opportunities to build their professional knowledge. A clear and systematic process is embedded for internal evaluation. Outcomes for priority learners are focused on and thoughtfully considered in evaluation records.
A strategic plan and a clear vision guide the New Shoots group and ensure ongoing review and development of improvement actions. Teachers’ professional goals align with the strategic objectives. Improvement actions
New Shoots Children’s Centre - Pakuranga will include the following action in its Quality Improvement Planning:
To increase the visibility of children’s languages and cultures in their assessment records.
The New Shoots governance group has indicated that it will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:
To strengthen the collective capability of individual services to undertake and use internal evaluation to guide continued improvement over time.
To continue to support all services to develop meaningful ways to celebrate the cultural identities of individual children and their whānau.
Before the review, the staff and management of New Shoots Children’s Centre - Pakuranga completed an ERO 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; safety checking; teacher registration; ratios)
relevant evacuation procedures and practices.
All early childhood services are required to promote children's health and safety and to regularly review their compliance with legal requirements.
Patricia Davey
Director of Early Childhood Education (ECE)
25 September 2023
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Early Childhood Service Name |
New Shoots Children’s Centre - Pakuranga |
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Profile Number |
47131 |
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Location |
Pakuranga, Auckland |
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Service type |
Education and care service |
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Number licensed for |
140 children, including up to 48 aged under 2 |
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Percentage of qualified teachers |
80-99% |
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Service roll |
123 |
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Review team on site |
June 2023 |
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Date of this report |
25 September 2023 |
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Most recent ERO report(s) |
Education Review, May 2019 |
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Not well placed |
Requires further development |
Well placed |
Very well placed |
New Shoots Children's Centre - Pakuranga is well placed to promote positive learning outcomes for children.
ERO's findings that support this overall judgement are summarised below.
New Shoots Children's Centre - Pakuranga is licensed for 125 children, including up to 48 under the age of two years. It is one of 10 purpose-built centres owned and managed by New Shoots Children's Centre Ltd.
Children play and learn in six rooms. Each room caters for a different age group and has a teaching philosophy to guide practice. The roll includes 20 percent who identify as Māori, and 38 percent with Asian backgrounds. The cultural diversity of staff reflects the community they serve.
The organisation-wide philosophy places strong emphasis on providing a child-led, play-based curriculum. This is the Pakuranga centre's first review.
Infants and toddlers play and learn in two separate rooms. They have their own outdoor space that incorporates thoughtfully placed safe areas for babies learning to crawl and walk. Children experience nurturing, responsive relationships with attentive teachers in the calm, unhurried environments. Teachers place strong emphasis on the dignity of each child by ensuring children's routines are individualised and child-paced. They sensitively support parents as children move into and through the centre.
Older children confidently approach adults and choose their learning activities. They experience respectful relationships with each other and their teachers. Children share their ideas and explain their needs. They show a strong sense of belonging to their learning environments as they work with and alongside others.
Children lead the learning programmes. They have many opportunities for long periods of uninterrupted play. Teachers purposefully integrate care moments and meal times into the daily programme. This allows children to complete their work and choose when they participate in routines. Teachers closely monitor children's nutrition and care needs.
Children make good use of their individual portfolios to revisit learning. Teachers work purposefully with children, using a range of approaches to foster their language development.
Teachers offer a wide range of attractively presented natural and other resources in each room. Children have easy access to open-ended resources to foster problem-solving, creativity and innovative thinking. The oldest children have regular visits to the nearby bush as part of the centre's local curriculum.
The professional leader supports teachers well to build their capability. She models practice, and works with teaching teams to reflect on and challenge their own practice. Appraisal is a useful process that also helps teachers to reflect on their practice. Teachers regularly participate in internal and external professional learning opportunities.
Internal evaluation is well established. Leaders use the outcomes from evaluations to build teacher capability and inform decision-making. There is clear alignment between the centre's annual strategic plan, internal evaluation, appraisal and professional learning provision.
Directors provide strong governance structures, a comprehensive policy and procedure framework and personalised support to guide leadership and centre practices. They have developed well-considered curriculum values that underpin teaching and learning approaches across the organisation.
Leaders agree that the key next steps include:
strengthening bicultural practice and the use of Māori concepts and values in key documentation
increasing the consistency of assessment, planning and evaluation to ensure that:
strengthening support for children's preparation to transition to school.
Before the review, the staff and management of New Shoots Children's Centre - Pakuranga 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:
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.
Steve Tanner
Director Review and Improvement Services Northern
Northern Region
23 May 2019
The Education Review Office (ERO) is the government department that, as part of its work, reviews early childhood services throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. ERO’s reports provide information for parents and communities about each service’s strengths and next steps for development. ERO’s bicultural evaluation framework Ngā Pou Here is described in SECTION 3 of this report. Early childhood services are partners in the review process and are expected to make use of the review findings to enhance children's wellbeing and learning.
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Location |
Pakuranga, Auckland |
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Ministry of Education profile number |
47131 |
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Licence type |
Education & Care Service |
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Licensed under |
Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008 |
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Number licensed for |
125 children, including up to 48 aged under 2 |
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Service roll |
130 |
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Gender composition |
Girls 53% Boys 47% |
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Ethnic composition |
Māori |
20% |
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Percentage of qualified teachers |
80% + |
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Reported ratios of staff to children |
Under 2 |
1:4 |
Better than minimum requirements |
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Over 2 |
1:8 |
Better than minimum requirements |
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Review team on site |
March 2019 |
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Date of this report |
23 May 2019 |
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Most recent ERO report(s) |
No previous ERO reports |
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ERO’s overarching question for an early childhood education review is ‘How well placed is this service to promote positive learning outcomes for children?’ ERO focuses on the following factors as described in the bicultural framework Ngā Pou Here:
Pou Whakahaere – how the service determines its vision, philosophy and direction to ensure positive outcomes for children
Pou Ārahi – how leadership is enacted to enhance positive outcomes for children
Mātauranga – whose knowledge is valued and how the curriculum is designed to achieve positive outcomes for children
Tikanga whakaako – how approaches to teaching and learning respond to diversity and support positive outcomes for children.
Within these areas ERO considers the effectiveness of arotake – self review and of whanaungatanga – partnerships with parents and whānau.
ERO evaluates how well placed a service is to sustain good practice and make ongoing improvements for the benefit of all children at the service.
A focus for the government is that all children, especially priority learners, have an opportunity to benefit from quality early childhood education. ERO will report on how well each service promotes positive outcomes for all children, with a focus on children who are Māori, Pacific, have diverse needs, and are up to the age of two.
For more information about the framework and Ngā Pou Here refer to ERO’s Approach to Review in Early Childhood Services.
The overall judgement that ERO makes will depend on how well the service promotes positive learning outcomes for children. The categories are:
Very well placed
Well placed
Requires further development
Not well placed
ERO has developed criteria for each category. These are available on ERO’s website.
ERO reviews are tailored to each service’s context and performance, within the overarching review framework. The aim is to provide information on aspects that are central to positive outcomes for children and useful to the service.