113 Canal Road, Avondale, Auckland
View on mapAkarangi | 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 Learning Stars Preschool are as follows:
Outcome Indicators(What the service knows about outcomes for learners) |
Whakaū Embedding |
Ngā Akatoro Domains |
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Learning Conditions
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Whakaū Embedding |
Learning Stars Preschool is a privately owned education and care service. The owner and centre supervisor are registered teachers and responsible for the governance and management of the service. They lead a teaching team of two qualified teachers and one support staff. Children enrolled in the service are from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Leaders and teachers have responsive and reciprocal relationships with children, parents and whānau. Teachers foster a holistic perspective of learning and development to ensure children have opportunities to lead their own learning within a play-based curriculum. Intentional teaching approaches support children to cultivate caring and nurturing relationships with their peers. Teachers view children as highly competent and capable learners.
Teachers and leaders are continuing to embed assessment for learning processes. Their focus is to ensure that assessment documentation acknowledges children’s cultures, languages and identity, and provides evidence of their progress overtime. Planning for children’s learning priorities is undertaken in collaboration with parents, whānau and children, and it informs curriculum design. Children’s individual learning plans acknowledge their strengths and interests. Teachers build on these to support children to achieve the service’s learning priorities and learning outcomes in Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum.
Children experience an inclusive environment that provides opportunities for learning irrespective of gender, ability, and ethnicity. Successful learning conditions include:
embracing and celebrating children’s cultures, languages and identity, and fostering, respecting and promoting children’s home languages
effectively supporting children with additional needs to experience success in the curriculum with their peers
valuing and making visible te ao Māori (the Māori world) and making it a strategic priority to ensure these practices are authentically enacted
liaising closely with parents and external agencies, where appropriate, to provide for the learning and wellbeing of all children.
A positive team culture contributes to teachers’ focus on continuous quality improvement. A collaborative leadership approach, supported by deliberate opportunities for coaching and mentoring, has contributed to building teachers’ leadership capability. Communication with the parent community about service operations and how the curriculum contributes to children’s learning, is well supported by managers.
Leaders and teachers engage in reviews and evaluations that have resulted in well-considered change. Strengthening processes is a work in progress. This includes developing a deeper understanding of evaluation, evidence-based monitoring, and evaluating the impact of resulting improvements on learner outcomes.
Learning Stars Preschool will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:
Teachers continue to foster children’s complex thinking and leadership of their own learning.
Continue to embed knowledge and capability of effective evaluation for improvement across the team. Use this knowledge and capability to evaluate the service curriculum with a focus on how changes to routines, learning experiences and teaching practices impact positively or negatively on learners.
Before the review, the staff and management of Learning Stars Preschool 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.
Filivaifale Jason Swann
Director Review and Improvement Services (Northern)
Northern Region | Te Tai Raki
11 July 2022
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Early Childhood Service Name |
Learning Stars Preschool |
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Profile Number |
20286 |
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Location |
Avondale, Auckland |
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Service type |
Education and care service |
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Number licensed for |
33 children, including up to 8 aged under 2 |
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Percentage of qualified teachers |
80-99% |
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Service roll |
28 |
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Ethnic composition |
Māori 8, NZ European/Pākehā 3, Indian 6, Pacific 7, |
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Review team on site |
May 2022 |
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Date of this report |
11 July 2022 |
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Most recent ERO report(s) |
Education Review, May 2018; |
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Not well placed |
Requires further development |
Well placed |
Very well placed |
ERO's findings that support this overall judgement are summarised below.
Kid's Cove Education & Childcare is a well established early learning service in a quiet residential street in Avondale. It is one of three Kid's Cove centres owned by the same family group. The centre operates in a renovated bungalow and is licenced to cater for 33 children, including eight up to two years of age. The centre serves a culturally diverse community and has relatively even numbers of Māori, Pacific, Pākehā and African children. There are also smaller numbers of Indian and Chinese children.
The centre is organised into two, age-related learning spaces. Infants and toddlers up to two years of age have their own indoor and outdoor spaces but have significant opportunities to mix with the older children. The centre's philosophy espouses a deep respect for children. Its aims are to nurture children in partnership with whānau in a warm, homely environment where teachers follow children's interests and dispositions.
One of the owners, the service director, is actively involved in the centre and shares her time across all three Kid's Cove services. The manager has worked at the centre for many years. She is responsible for the daily running of the centre and is supported by an experienced, long-serving teaching team. An external early childhood consultant provides governance and management guidance, and support for teachers to enhance their teaching practices.
The 2014 ERO report identified areas of good practice that included a welcoming and supportive environment for children and families. The next steps identified included improving planning, assessment and evaluation, evaluating the formal mathematics and transition-to-school programmes, and improving teacher appraisal processes. These areas have been addressed well.
Children and their families experience a welcoming and inclusive environment. Children settle well at the start of their day. They are trusting with their teachers and comfortable in the centre environment. Older children have many opportunities to visit and play with babies and toddlers. They are very caring towards each other and their younger friends.
Teachers work together to plan good quality learning programmes based on children's identified interests and learning needs. They work alongside children, guiding and supporting their learning effectively. Teachers are increasingly skilled in noticing, recognising and responding to children's emerging interests, and they build on children's earlier learning well. Literacy and numeracy are very well integrated into other learning areas and within the context of children's play.
Infants and toddlers experience gentle, nurturing approaches from knowledgeable and capable teachers. They cater well to the care and learning needs of these youngest children. Regular communication with parents ensures that teachers follow home routines and respond to parent preferences. Teachers follow and respond well to children's dispositions and ideas about the world. They also respond well to the aspirations that parents have for their children and are sensitive to families' needs. Transitions to school are very well managed by teachers.
Teachers are respectful and positive with children. They promote an unhurried pace to the learning day, and manage routines so that children's needs are well met. Teachers' focus on children's interests includes providing them with very good access to learning materials that include open-ended resources. Children's portfolios highlight the progress children make in their learning over time. They also make clear the teacher's role in planning for and extending children's learning.
Teachers recognise and value children's cultures and languages in many ways throughout the centre. They are increasingly skilled in their use of te reo Māori and inclusion of some aspects of tikanga Māori. Teachers' intentions to further strengthen the centre's bicultural curriculum show their commitment to promoting the cultural identity of Māori children and their whānau.
The centre is well led and governed. The centre manager is collaborative and improvement focused. Teachers value professional learning opportunities, including the use of research, to improve their practice. The centre's philosophy is evident in practice. It is well aligned to the centre's strategic planning and internal evaluation, and teachers' professional learning and appraisal processes. Internal evaluation is very well understood and used as a tool for ongoing improvement.
Key next steps for the centre include centre managers:
Before the review, the staff and management of Kid's Cove Education & Childcare 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.
The next ERO review of Kid's Cove Education & Childcare will be in three years.
Julie Foley
Deputy Chief Review Officer Northern (Acting)
Te Tai Raki - Northern Region
28 May 2018
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.
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Location |
Avondale, Auckland |
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Ministry of Education profile number |
20286 |
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Licence type |
Education & Care Service |
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Licensed under |
Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008 |
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Number licensed for |
33 children, including up to 8 aged under 2 |
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Service roll |
26 |
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Gender composition |
Boys 14 Girls 12 |
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Ethnic composition |
Māori |
6 |
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Percentage of qualified teachers |
80% + |
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Reported ratios of staff to children |
Under 2 |
1:4 |
Better than minimum requirements |
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Over 2 |
1:9 |
Better than minimum requirements |
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Review team on site |
February 2018 |
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Date of this report |
28 May 2018 |
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Most recent ERO report(s) |
Education Review |
September 2014 |
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Supplementary Review |
August 2011 |
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Education Review |
June 2010 |
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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:
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 and the timing of the next review will depend on how well placed a service is to promote positive learning outcomes for children. The categories are:
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.