14 South Terrace, Darfield
View on map1 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 Kindergarten – Darfield are as follows:
Outcome Indicators(What the service knows about outcomes for learners) |
Whakaū Embedding |
Ngā Akatoro Domains |
|
Learning ConditionsOrganisational Conditions |
Whakaū Embedding Whakaū Embedding |
Annabel's Kindergarten – Darfield 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. Good progress has been made in undertaking an internal evaluation of the learning priorities, as recommended in the 2019 ERO review report.
Children benefit from a rich curriculum that affirms them as competent and confident learners. Teachers are highly responsive to their strengths, abilities, and needs. They effectively support children to develop emerging social and emotional, literacy, numeracy and oral language skills and intentionally build their learner identity. A well-resourced, thoughtfully designed learning environment enables children to lead their own learning. They are well supported to transition into, through and out of the service. Children demonstrate a strong sense of belonging.
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.
Assessment records show teachers integrating the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, service’s learning priorities, and parent aspirations. Children’s learning progress over time is evident in individual documentation.
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.
Annabel's Kindergarten – Darfield 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.
Before the review, the staff and management of Annabel's Kindergarten – Darfield 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)
11 October 2023
| Early Childhood Service Name | Annabel's Kindergarten - Darfield |
| Profile Number | 70105 |
| Location | Darfield |
|
Service type |
Education and care service |
|
Number licensed for |
37 children, aged over 2 |
|
Percentage of qualified teachers |
80-99% |
|
Service roll |
40 |
|
Review team on site |
May 2023 |
|
Date of this report |
11 October 2023 |
|
Most recent ERO report(s) |
Education Review, October 2019 |
|
Not well placed |
Requires further development |
Well placed |
Very well placed |
Annabel's Kindergarten - Darfield is very well placed to promote positive learning outcomes for children.
ERO's findings that support this overall judgement are summarised below.
Annabel's Kindergarten is one of eight early learning services within Annabel's Educare Ltd. An area manager oversees the eight centres and is supported in her work by the owner/director. Both the area manager and owner are qualified early childhood teachers.
Annabel's Kindergarten is licensed for 37 children. Most children are three years old. The centre is one of three adjacent Annabel services in Darfield. Most children begin in Annabel's Educare, then move into Annabel's Kindergarten and on to Annabel's Private Kindergarten.
The service is open from 9.00am to 3.00pm. On a day-to-day basis many children stay longer by beginning and/or finishing their day in Annabel's Educare centre while spending the majority of their day is the kindergarten.
The service has a very experienced centre manager and all the teachers are qualified early childhood educators. Since the 2014 ERO review, teachers have developed a large garden area together with Annabel's Educare. The kindergarten is part of the Malvern Kāhui Ako|Community of Learning.
Annabel's Kindergarten continues to be a high performing service and has made very good progress against ERO's 2014 recommendations.
This review was part of a cluster of three reviews of Darfield services within Annabel's Educare Ltd.
Children benefit from very caring, responsive and respectful relationships with each other and their teachers. They show high levels of engagement in their learning, and play well alongside and with each other. They confidently initiate and lead their learning, and support other children with their learning.
The children experience broad and deep learning across the different curriculum areas, especially in early literacy, mathematics, science and the creative arts. There is also a strong focus on sustainability, social competence, emotional wellbeing, dispositions to support learning and physical challenge. A recent initiative using storytelling is further enhancing children's literacy.
Children benefit from high quality teaching practices. Teachers maximise their interactions with children by actively seeking opportunities to enrich children’s oral language and working theories. Teachers are very intentional in what and how they set up the environment each day, in order to best support individual and group learning goals. Children are very well supported in their transition into the centre and onto Annabel's Private Kindergarten.
The introduction of Te Whariki 2017 (the early childhood curriculum) has further strengthened teachers' emphasis on children's learning and the strategies they use to support this. Teachers have very effective planning, assessment and evaluation processes for individual and group learning. Parents are very well informed, engaged and involved in their children’s learning.
The teachers' commitment to honouring the Treaty of Waitangi is highly evident. Children have many opportunities to experience aspects of te ao and te reo Māori each day. Core Māori values, such as manaakitanga (kindness), kaitiakitanga (care for the environment) and whanaungatanga (the importance of relationships), are integral. Cultures of children and their families from beyond New Zealand are celebrated.
Centre and service leaders are very reflective and improvement focused. Very effective internal evaluation practices are well embedded, and include evaluating the effectiveness of teaching strategies and different curriculum areas in supporting children's learning. Children's and parents' voice are central to evaluation practice. Internal evaluation contributes strongly to well-informed change and ongoing development.
Strong governance and management practices contribute to high quality provision for children and their families. Centre processes, such as relevant professional learning and development (PLD) and robust appraisal practices, align closely with the service's well-considered strategic goals and planning. There is a sound policy and procedure framework and well-developed resources to support consistency of practice within and across the three centres.
Leaders have a deliberate focus on equity for all learners. This is evident in targeted budgeting for personnel and resources for identified children. Children with additional needs are very well supported in their learning.
Leaders have built positive relationships and partnerships in order to best support children's learning. Leaders and staff work very collaboratively to achieve strategic and centre priorities. Teachers' strengths are valued and leadership fostered and distributed. Involvement in the Malvern Kāhui Ako is benefitting teachers and children, through shared PLD and professional conversations.
The service leaders have identified, and ERO agrees, the need to review their curriculum in relation to Te Whāriki 2017. This review will include defining the learning that matters most/learning priorities at the service. Subsequent internal evaluation processes should evaluate how well the curriculum promotes these identified learning priorities.
Before the review, the staff and management of Annabel's Kindergarten - Darfield 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:
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.
Dr Lesley Patterson
Director Review and Improvement Services Southern
Southern Region
11 October 2019
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.
|
Location |
Darfield |
||
|
Ministry of Education profile number |
70105 |
||
|
Licence type |
Education & Care Service |
||
|
Licensed under |
Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008 |
||
|
Number licensed for |
37 children aged over 2 |
||
|
Service roll |
50 |
||
|
Gender composition |
Girls 25, Boys 25 |
||
|
Ethnic composition |
Māori |
2 |
|
|
Percentage of qualified teachers |
80% + |
||
|
Reported ratios of staff to children |
Over 2 |
1:8 |
Better than minimum requirements |
|
Review team on site |
July 2019 |
||
|
Date of this report |
11 October 2019 |
||
|
Most recent ERO report |
Education Review |
February 2014 |
|
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.
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.
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.