Maraekakaho Early Childhood Centre - 17/12/2020

• 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 Maraekakaho Early Childhood Centre are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Maraekakaho Early Childhood Centre (‘Gumboots’) is located adjacent to the local primary school in rural Hawke’s Bay. Governance and management of this community-owned service is overseen by a parent trustee board. A new supervisor has been appointed from within the teaching team since the August 2016 ERO evaluation.

3 Summary of findings

Children experience a well-designed curriculum, collaboratively developed by staff and parents to reflect the rural community. The philosophy is clearly articulated and aligned to the learning priorities of manaakitanga, rangatiratanga, kaitiakitanga and children seeing themselves as lifelong learners. Children’s progress in these is shown through assessment, planning and evaluation.

The curriculum is highly inclusive. Teachers are proactive in their work with external agencies and families to ensure positive learning outcomes for children requiring additional learning support. Children are building their social competence skills and actively include others in their play.

Teachers continue to strengthen the curriculum to reflect individual children’s cultures, languages and identities. They have identified that they are on an ongoing journey to integrate meaningful te reo and tikanga Māori into the curriculum. Children have a range of opportunities to learn about their own and other cultures.

Parents of older children take formal opportunities to share learning goals for their children, and these are intentionally planned for. This supports successful transition to school. Teachers recognise the need to strengthen individual planning for children under the age of four years.

Leaders strongly promote collaboration and the conditions to promote equity and improvement. The philosophy, vision, goals and priorities for learning are well understood and embedded in practice. Relational trust within the team is evident and ongoing evaluation is undertaken to reveal the responsiveness and effectiveness of teaching and learning.

The community trust is well informed and have sound systems and processes that support decision making in the best interests of children. Trust members recognise the need to strengthen their own use of internal evaluation to better know that their decisions are leading toward equity and excellence. Strengthening handover and induction processes for new trustees should better support succession and continuity of governance practices.

4 Improvement actions

Maraekakaho Early Childhood Centre will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• utilise assessment to identify progress and plan for teaching and learning of individual younger children
• strengthen the use of meaningful te reo and tikanga Māori into day-to-day teaching practice
• develop effective induction processes to support those in governance roles.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Maraekakaho Early Childhood Centre 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.

Phil Cowie

Director Review and Improvement Services (Central)

Central Region | Te Tai Pūtahi Nui

17 December 2020

About the Early Childhood Service