Gladstone Pre-School

Education institution number:
83073
Service type:
Education and Care Service
Definition:
Not Applicable
Total roll:
80
Telephone:
Address:

20 Lewis Street, Gladstone-Invercargill, Invercargill

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Gladstone Pre-School

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 Gladstone Pre-School are as follows:

Outcome Indicators

(What the service knows about outcomes for learners)

Whāngai Establishing

Ngā Akatoro Domains

 

Learning Conditions
Organisational Conditions

 

 

Whāngai Establishing

Whāngai Establishing

2 Context of the Service

Gladstone Preschool Ltd is a privately owned and operated service. Children play and learn in two houses and are grouped according to age. Teacher and leaders have made some progress in addressing the key next steps from the 2019 ERO report. However, developing capability in internal evaluation remains an area for improvement.

3 Summary of findings

The service's core value of hāpori (community) is strongly visible within the service. Children have good opportunities to learn about the local and wider community. Older children participate in a four-year-old programme which promotes literacy and numeracy and key competencies for school.

The curriculum offers a wide range of experiences.  Leaders and teachers scaffold children’s learning and development through planned and spontaneous group, and individual experiences. Children are encouraged to learn with and alongside others.

Infants and toddlers experience a curriculum that positively promotes their sense of security in being able to predict what will happen next. Routines structure the rhythm of the day although there are missed opportunities within these to promote children’s independence and decision making.  

There is a clear process for guiding Children’s assessment and planning. Parents and whānau regularly participate in their children’s learning by sharing their aspirations. The integration of te reo and tikanga Māori is sometimes evident in practice. There is limited evidence of children's language, culture and identity within assessment and planning, and within the environment.

Leaders and teachers access a range of internal and external professional learning to further develop their knowledge and teaching practice. They are improvement focused and promote a shared understanding of the service’s philosophy, vision, and goals for children’s learning.

Internal evaluation requires further improvement. The service is at the early stages of developing processes and practices to support effective internal evaluation. Further building of leaders’ and teachers’ capability to implement effective internal evaluation is required.

Trusting relationships are evident through distributed leadership and on-going communication. Leaders are developing systems and practices that are yet to be fully implemented to support decision making. Some systems and practices require better monitoring and evaluation.

4 Improvement actions

Gladstone Pre-School will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

  • build teachers’ and leaders’ understanding of effective internal evaluation processes to identify what is working well for children and what could be improved

  • recognise and respond to the identities, languages, and cultures of individual children within the curriculum

  • examine how well the routines within the curriculum are empowering young children’s independence and decision making.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Gladstone Pre-School 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:

  • 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; 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.

6 Actions for Compliance

ERO identified the following areas of non-compliance:

  • showing how evaluation of the drills has informed the annual review of the services emergency plan

  • showing how accidents are analysed to identify hazards and appropriate action is taken.

Licensing Criteria for Early Childhood Education and Care Services 2008, HS8, HS12.

Since the onsite visit, the service has provided ERO with evidence that shows it has addressed the following non-compliance:

  • the owner has now been safety checked in accordance with the requirements of the Children's Act 2014. [GMA7a]

7 Recommendation to Ministry of Education

ERO recommends the Ministry follows up with the service provider to ensure non-compliances identified in this report are addressed.

Dr Lesley Patterson
Director Review and Improvement Services (Southern)
Southern Region | Te Tai Tini

24 August 2022 

8 About the Early Childhood Service

Early Childhood Service Name

Gladstone Pre-School

Profile Number

83073

Location

Invercargill

Service type

Education and care service

Number licensed for

63 children, including up to 24 aged under 2

Percentage of qualified teachers

100%

Service roll

86

Ethnic composition

Māori 11, NZ European/Pākehā 68, Other ethnic groups 7

Review team on site

May 2022

Date of this report

24 August 2022

Most recent ERO report(s)

Education Review, March 2019; Education Review, December 2015

Gladstone Pre-School - 20/03/2019

1 Evaluation of Gladstone Pre-School

How well placed is Gladstone Pre-School to promote positive learning outcomes for children?

Not well placed

Requires further development

Well placed

Very well placed

Gladstone Pre-School is well placed to promote positive learning outcomes for children.

ERO's findings that support this overall judgement are summarised below.

Background

Gladstone Pre-School provides all day education and care for children from birth to five years old, five days a week. It is licensed for up to 63 children, including up to 24 under two. Children are cared for and learn in two adjacent 'houses', one for children under two and a half years old and one for older children.

The preschool is one of two services owned by the director. She is responsible for the operations and governance of both preschools. Senior teachers oversee teaching and learning in each house. The majority of teachers at Gladstone Pre-School are experienced and qualified and have worked there for a significant length of time.

Through its curriculum and teaching practices, teachers aim to support children to become confident, competent learners and effective communicators. They also seek to support all children to develop a sense of belonging and wellbeing, with reciprocal, respectful relationships, inclusive attitudes and critical thinking skills.

Since ERO's 2015 report, good progress has been made on most of the areas for development identified in the preschool's last report.

The Review Findings

Children's interests, strengths and needs are very well responded to through teaching practices and the curriculum. Teachers:

  • pay careful attention to the interests and developmental age and stage of children
  • purposefully set up the learning environment to provide opportunities for challenge and extension
  • foster and follow children's initiative in their play
  • support children's developing independence and decision-making.

Very young children also have choice and challenge in their learning environment. Infants' and toddlers' wellbeing is carefully supported by nurturing relationships with their teachers. Parents' and whānau aspirations for their children's care and learning are regularly sought and incorporated into learning programmes and routines.

Teachers could better show in children's learning stories the difference their intentional strategies have made to children's outcomes.

Leaders and teachers have been building shared understandings of the vision and values of the preschool and this is providing greater direction and guidance for teacher practice. Other benefits of this initiative include:

  • consultation with parents and whānau about what learning matters to them, and a focus on 'sharing' curriculum with families more effectively

  • increased professional collaboration for curriculum design

  • teachers inquiring into what works to promote positive outcomes for children

  • the increasing visibility of learning priorities in assessment and planning documentation for individual children and groups.

Children benefit from a broad curriculum that effectively promotes their learning across a range of areas. They are well supported to develop respectful, reciprocal relationships with other children and their teachers. They have many opportunities to develop early literacy and numeracy skills and knowledge.

Teachers have built their understandings of New Zealand's bicultural heritage. They are using this, together with partnerships with whānau and local marae, to affirm and respond to children's cultural identities, and to provide all children with opportunities to experience and learn about New Zealand's indigenous Māori culture.

The director is committed to providing the conditions for effective early education and care. Since ERO's 2015 report she has:

  • strengthened reporting systems, to be better assured of children's health and safety
  • strengthened teacher appraisal processes
  • supported teachers to build their capability to deliver a bicultural curriculum, and implement Te Whāriki (2017), The NZ Early Childhood Curriculum
  • supported teachers to undertake internal evaluation.

The director could make better use of internal evaluation to be assured about the implementation of the two preschools' values and how well children are progressing and achieving. The director needs to consider options for improving the consistency of professional leadership across her services.

Key Next Steps

To better enact the director's vision of high quality care and education, the director needs to improve the consistency of professional leadership across her two preschools to ensure effective practice and desired developments are well implemented.

To continue to build the rigour of internal evaluation, the director, leaders and teachers should:

  • ensure that they adequately evaluate current practice before they move onto planning new developments

  • use indicators of effective practice to support judgements about quality

  • systematically collect and analyse evidence of teaching practice to 'test' findings.

Aspects of assessment, planning and evaluation processes have been strengthened, however some variability in process and quality across the director's two preschools remains. To continue to strengthen assessment and planning practice, leaders and teachers need to:

  • better document and evaluate teachers' planned strategies to extend and progress children's learning, for individuals and groups of children

  • develop quality assurance systems and guidelines for assessment and planning, in both preschools, that reflect the service's indicators for effective practice.

Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Gladstone Pre-School 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:

  • 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; 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.

To improve current practice, the preschool needs to:

  • strengthen processes for identifying and managing hazards

  • include planning for emergencies in risk management planning for excursions

  • involve parents more in regular review of preschool policies and procedures

  • consider cultural perspectives when reviewing policies

  • ensure teachers have formal observations of practice as part of appraisal.

Alan Wynyard

Director Review and Improvement Services Southern

Southern Region

20 March 2019

The Purpose of ERO Reports

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.

2 Information about the Early Childhood Service

Location

Invercargill

Ministry of Education profile number

83073

Licence type

Education & Care Service

Licensed under

Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008

Number licensed for

63 children, including up to 24 aged under 2

Service roll

108

Gender composition

Girls: 58

Boys: 50

Ethnic composition

Māori
Pākehā
Other ethnicities

15%
79%
6%

Percentage of qualified teachers

80% +

Reported ratios of staff to children

Under 2

1:4

Better than minimum requirements

Over 2

1:7

Better than minimum requirements

Review team on site

December 2018

Date of this report

20 March 2019

Most recent ERO reports

Education Review

December 2015

Education Review

October 2012

Education Review

March 2009

3 General Information about Early Childhood Reviews

ERO’s Evaluation Framework

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.

ERO’s Overall Judgement

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.

Review Coverage

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.