Annabel's Educare - West Melton

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 - West Melton are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Annabel’s Educare - West Melton opened in 2018. It is one of eight early learning services located across Canterbury. The owner supports a centre manager to lead a well-established teaching team. A small number of Māori children attend and those of diverse cultural heritages. This is the second ERO review of the service.

3 Summary of findings

Children play and learn well within a broad curriculum, based on Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum. Teachers are highly responsive to children’s strengths, interests and capabilities. Children with additional needs are well supported to succeed. Teachers engage children in meaningful experiences that extend their thinking and learning. There is a strong curriculum focus on the foundations of literacy, mathematics, social and emotional competence. Children are viewed as capable and confident and lead their own learning.

Infants and toddlers are well supported to learn at their own pace. They have a large and well-resourced indoor and outdoor area. Teachers are respectful and highly attuned to their individual needs and verbal and non-verbal communication cues.

Children experience aspects of a bi-cultural curriculum, with storytelling a centre focus. They have a range of opportunities to see, hear and experience te reo Māori and tikanga Māori. However, leaders and teachers are 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.

Leaders and teachers need to continue to build their capability to implement a culturally responsive curriculum. Aspects of children’s cultures, languages and identity are evident in assessment documentation and the learning environment.

Assessment records clearly show children’s participation and involvement in learning experiences. Children’s learning progress over time in relation to the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki, and the service’s priorities for learning is not yet consistently evident. Continuing to embed assessment guidelines to better enable consistency of practice is required.

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 - West Melton will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• embed assessment guidelines and practices to ensure documentation consistently shows children’s progress overtime in relation to the Te Whāriki learning outcomes

• 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 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 - West Melton 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