Stems From Home 3

1 ERO’s Judgements

Akarangi | 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 Stems From Home 3 are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Stems From Home 3 is one of three privately-owned homebased education and care networks. The directors have clear roles and responsibilities in operational and pedagogical leadership. They are supported by four learning advisors who are qualified early childhood teachers.

This network provides education and care to an increasingly diverse community. Almost all educators have completed relevant qualifications for their role. A number of tamariki Māori and a small number of children from Pacific heritages attend. As part of this evaluation, ERO visited a sample of educators’ homes in Christchurch.

3 Summary of findings

Children, including infants and toddlers, are well supported in thoughtfully prepared environments where their learning is fostered by educators who know them and their whānau very well. They have many opportunities to learn in the home and in the local community. Learning advisors and educators ensure that parents’ aspirations influence children’s learning. Those with additional learning needs are well supported to meet their learning goals.

Learning advisors provide strong, respectful mentoring and coaching to educators. They:

• continually provide ongoing support to build their capabilities and expertise
• intentionally role model learning-based interactions with children during their visits
• assist educators to gather and use parent aspirations and whānau values to guide curriculum provision
• promote positive, learning-focused partnerships with children, parents and whānau.

Children are very well supported to develop their increasing social and emotional competence through gentle guidance and intentional teaching strategies. Assessment documentation identifies children’s interests and developing capabilities. Learning advisors use learning dispositions in narrative assessments. However, they are yet fully incorporate the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum.

There is some recognition of children’s languages, cultures and learner identities through learning advisors’ monthly newsletters. The implementation of a rich bicultural curriculum that also recognises the place of children’s languages, cultures and learner identities is required.

Leaders and learning advisors are embedding the organisational conditions that enable collaboration for improvement. Leaders use a systematic approach to internal evaluation. Consistently monitoring and evaluating the impacts of changes made on outcomes for specific groups of children and all children, requires further development.

Those responsible for governance and management place the learning and wellbeing of children and families at the centre of decision making. They actively pursue external agencies to support children’s ongoing learning, as appropriate, and they develop policies and procedures that guide inclusive practice across the networks.

4 Improvement actions

Stems From Home 3 will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• Build learning advisors’ professional knowledge, expertise and cultural competence to design and support educators to implement a responsive and rich bicultural curriculum for all children.
• Make the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki more visible in assessment, planning and evaluation to show children’s learning and progress over time.
• Extend internal evaluation to be more evaluative to know what works well for whom, and what needs further investigation for specific groups of children.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Stems From Home 3 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)

16 February 2024

6 About the Early Childhood Service