Annabel's Educare - Arlington

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 Annabel’s Educare - Arlington are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Annabel’s Educare - Arlington is one of eight early learning services located across Canterbury. The owner supports a recently appointed centre manager who leads an established teaching team. A small number of Māori children attend. Progress has been made in evaluation of the learning priorities, identified as key next steps in the 2020 ERO report.

3 Summary of findings

Children learn in a responsive curriculum that fosters their developing social and emotional competence and wellbeing. Infants, toddlers, and older children lead their own learning in a well-resourced indoor and outdoor environment. Teachers respond effectively to their interests. Early literacy, creativity, numeracy and oral language are promoted. Children are well supported to become confident and capable learners.

The learning outcomes of Te Whāriki the early childhood curriculum, are intentionally used to plan for, and show progression of children’s learning over time. Parents aspirations are valued, and consistently integrated through individual assessment documentation.

The service continues to build leaders and teachers' capability to implement a culturally responsive and bicultural curriculum. The service is in the early stages of designing and developing a curriculum that reflects the aspirations of whānau Māori and enables their children to succeed as Māori. Aspects of children’s cultures, languages and identity are evident in assessment documentation and the learning environment.

Ongoing, systematic self-review and the service’s annual strategic plan informs decisions for relevant professional learning and development and curriculum development. Effectiveness of Internal evaluation processes can be increased by building teacher capability to:

• develop clear measurable success indicators and strengthening data analysis

• identify, evaluate and monitor the impact of improvements on outcomes for identified individuals and groups of learners.

Improvement focused governance and management systems, processes and well-considered resource allocation clearly align to the service’s philosophy and vision for valued learning.

4 Improvement actions

Annabel’s Educare - Arlington will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• increase the visibility of individual children’s cultures, languages and identity in assessment documentation and the enacted curriculum

• engage with whānau Māori and explore authentic opportunities for them to contribute to the design and development of a curriculum that reflects Māori ways of knowing, being and doing and supports Māori learners to succeed as Māori

• continue to develop a localised bicultural curriculum responsive to the histories, pūrākau and places of significance of mana whenua

• continue to build collective understanding and use of effective internal evaluation.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Annabel’s Educare - Arlington 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)

15 September 2023

6 About the Early Childhood Service