Conclusion

This report investigated how well services were keeping up to date with changing regulations and legal requirements amid changes to the relicensing of early childhood services.

In just under 20 percent of services, proactive monitoring of resources was not present, resulting in these services being non-compliant with regulations. Non compliances were discussed on review and remedial action taken by the service or, if necessary, reported to the Ministry of Education for their action.

Owners of privately owned services are often not qualified teachers. The majority of services that were not managing their responsibilities well were stand-alone services that may not have had the support of a national organisation to keep them up to date with changes. It is important that when services are licensed, the Ministry of Education makes services aware of where they can get resources and up to date information about legislation changes.

Recommendations

ERO recommends that services:

• ensure that a person is appointed to be responsible for keeping up to date with health and safety regulations and meeting their compliance obligations
• implement systems to regularly review their health and safety polices and ensure that agreed practices are understood by all staff, and are implemented in practice
• regularly use resources such as those listed below, to find out about new health and safety legislation and responsibilities.