Harakeke - 14/12/2020

• On this page:

• 1 ERO’s Judgements
• 2 Context of the Service
• 3 Summary of findings
• 4 Improvement actions
• 5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements
• About the Early Childhood Service

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 (PDF 3.01MB) are the basis for making judgements about the effectiveness of the service in achieving equity and excellence for all learners. The Akarangi Quality Evaluation Judgement Rubric (PDF 91.30KB) derived from the indicators, is used to inform the ERO’s judgements about this service’s performance in promoting equity and excellence.  Information about Akarangi | Quality Evaluations can be found here. 

ERO’s judgements for Harakeke are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Harakeke is a privately-owned, rural service that provides education and care for a maximum of 25 children from two years to school age. The owner, who is the centre manager, leads a team of four qualified teachers. Since the last ERO review in December 2013, there have been very few staff changes. The service has addressed the key next steps from the previous ERO report and has sustained a range of high-quality practices. Harakeke has gained the Silver Enviroschools award.

3 Summary of findings

Children and their families benefit from close relationships with teachers who know them very well. Teachers deliberately and successfully build children's social competence. Kaiako work respectfully in partnership with children, parents and whānau to support emotional wellbeing and cultural connectedness, within the play-based learning programme. Positive outcomes for children are clearly and consistently evident in learning information and service documentation.

Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, is highly evident in assessment, planning and evaluation processes and underpins the learning programme. Kaiako deliberately use the learning outcomes from Te Whāriki to guide and show children’s progress and achievement over time. These processes show that teachers value parent partnerships and children’s interests to successfully plan to extend children’s learning and development.

Trusting relationships at all levels of the service promote collaboration, openness to new learning, and ongoing improvement. Those responsible for governance and management have developed policies and procedures that:

• make explicit the expectation that kaiako will implement a bicultural curriculum
• reflect the rights of children to quality, inclusive early childhood education.

A collaborative, supportive team of teachers promotes a positive environment for ongoing learning. Leaders and kaiako continually build their professional knowledge, expertise and cultural competence to provide a rich, responsive curriculum for all children, including Māori. They participate in a wide range of professional learning opportunities and actively engage in critical reflection and problem solving that promotes positive outcomes for children.

Distributed, cohesive leadership approaches utilise the strengths of kaiako to promote high levels of engagement in the internal evaluation process. Kaiako use appropriate methods to gather a range of relevant information for the purposes of evaluation. These result in well-considered actions that impact positively on outcomes for children.

4 Improvement actions

Harakeke will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning. These are to:

• evaluate how effectively the service integrates the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in their daily practices and into key service documentation
• show more consistently how teachers intentionally plan the most appropriate teaching strategies to support children’s learning.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Harakeke 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.

Dr Lesley Patterson

Director Review and Improvement Services (Southern)

Southern Region | Te Tai Tini

14 December 2020

About the Early Childhood Service