Tom Parker House - 25/01/2021

• 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
• 6 Actions for Compliance
• About the Early Childhood Service

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 3.01 MB) 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 91.30 KB) 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 Tom Parker House are as follows:

2 Context of the Service

Tom Parker House is one of two community-based services operating under the umbrella of Birthright Hawke's Bay Child and Family Care. The organisation works with other agencies to provide practical help and support to families. The centre manager has oversight of both centres, supported by a senior teacher in each.

3 Summary of findings

Children lead their own learning within a calm, slow paced environment. The centre philosophy increasingly guides practice. Strong relationships between kaiako, parents and children are well established. The service works collaboratively with external agencies to reduce challenges to children’s participation in learning.

Consistent routines and attentive caregiving enhance infants’ and toddlers’ sense of security. Their verbal and non-verbal cues are responded to in meaningful ways. A variety of learning experiences encourage early language development. Te reo and tikanga Māori are becoming more consistent throughout the curriculum.

Staff inquire into their practice and make appropriate changes to promote culturally responsive care, particularly for Māori children. Leaders have identified that developing learning-focused partnerships with whānau should further support kaiako to build knowledge of each child’s cultural and learner identity. As a part of this work, strengthening the response to children’s cultural identity is needed to enrich the delivery of the curriculum.

Kaiako are beginning to explore children’s learning and progress in relation to the intended outcomes of Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum. Currently, they are investigating ways to better capture children’s progress of learning overtime. Further strengthening this process should improve kaiako understanding of how children are progressing against the service’s priorities for learning.

An increased use of internal evaluation is identifying actions for improvement. Teachers are developing their understanding of internal evaluation. Better use of appropriate indicators of high quality and identification of actual outcomes for children as a result of the evaluation is needed. This should provide greater insight into how well changes in practice are contributing to desired outcomes.

4 Improvement actions

Tom Parker House will include the following actions in its Quality Improvement Planning:

• develop learning-focused partnerships with parents and whānau to support children’s cultural connectedness through learning and delivery of the curriculum
• strengthen assessment practices to identify progress of learning over time and reflect children’s cultural and learner identity
• identify intended learning outcomes for children within evaluation to better monitor and evaluate the impact of actions and gauge what is working well, and for which groups of children.

5 Management Assurance on Legal Requirements

Before the review, the staff and management of Tom Parker House 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.

6 Actions for Compliance

ERO found areas of non-compliance in the service relating to:

• the inclusion of tsunami evacuation as a relevant drill to be practised by adults and children.
  [Licensing Criteria for Early Childhood Education and Care Centres 2008, HS8]

Phil Cowie

Director Review and Improvement Services (Central)

Central Region | Te Tai Pūtahi Nui

25 January 2021

About the Early Childhood Service