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ERO visited Samuel Language Academy in March 2018.

This newsletter was sent to school's participating in the New School's Operating Model.

In a scan of the current landscape, Cooper highlights the increasing participation of infants and toddlers in early learning settings, ongoing concerns about the quality of provision for infants and toddlers, and a reported lack of cultural responsiveness in many settings.

This ERO summary report focuses on how Central Regional Health School supports positive outcomes for ākonga in Oranga Tamariki residences.

This report represents the final phase in the external evaluation of the initial implementation of the approach with the initial group of 75 schools. The intended audience for this report is ERO senior leadership team. It is intended that this report will be used formatively to consider opportunities for refinement and improvement of the approach.

Contact details for general enquiries and ERO offices.

ERO has commissioned several discussion papers from an academic advisory group to assist with the review of its review framework, Ngā Pou Here. This paper provides commentary on two of the framework’s four po, te pou Mātauranga and te pou Tikanga Whakaako, with particular emphasis on assessment for learning.

The Education Review Office (ERO) first introduced evaluation indicators in 2003, revising them in 2010. This new version reflects a deepening understanding of how schools improve, and the role that evaluation plays in that process. It also reflects a strengthened relationship between ERO’s approaches to evaluation in English-medium and Māori-medium settings. It supports external and internal evaluation of schools.

In this paper Glasgow brings a Pacific voice to the debate about how the indicators should be revised. She argues that the care and education of young children has become infused with western, middle- class values and ideologies, institutionalised, normative, and separated from relationships and contexts. Following widespread consultation there was an expectation that Te Whāriki (1996) would directly speak to the needs of Pacific peoples, but this did not happen.

Wylie reports that there is very little research on the relationship between school governance and student learning. She suggests two reasons for this: (i) governance boards are not an essential feature of effective schools and (ii) it can be hard to separate the contribution of boards from that of school leaders, particularly where a board is school- based.

In her introduction, Thornton says that there is a lack of empirical research focused on effective leadership practice in early childhood education. This mirrors a silence on the subject in the original Te Whāriki (1996).

In her introduction, Berryman offers a brief critique of the current set of evaluation indicators and their framing. While broadly approving, she expresses concern that the relational and dynamic nature of the Dimension 6 indicators is not made explicit. Even more fundamental, although the document references the Treaty of Waitangi in the Introduction, the wording casts Māori in a recipient role rather than as one of two equals in a partnership.

This document is the result of a collaborative effort between ERO and representatives from hospital-based education and care services. It will support improved service performance and accountability, and focuses on how well placed hospital-based services are to contribute to children’s learning, and promote their wellbeing.

Te Ara Poutama is the core of Ngā Ara Whai Hui: Quality Framework for Evaluation and Improvement in Early Childhood Services. This is the framework for ERO’s approaches to reviewing early childhood services. The indicators, for outcomes and processes, are a central resource for use by ERO and the services themselves in evaluating quality in early childhood education and identifying where improvement is needed.

In this paper, Robinson discusses the inherent tension between evaluation for accountability and evaluation for improvement. As a means of managing this tension, the links between the two are often kept loose. The downside of this is that the school and external reviewers often end up evaluating different things instead of discussing why their judgments are at variance.

In this paper, Timperley begins by discussing the very limited nature of the research literature relating to the impacts of external reviews, adding that this has done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for them or to slow their spread. Nearly every educational jurisdiction that has an external review system mixes both accountability and improvement purposes, setting up an inherent tension.

The Evaluation Indicators for Education Reviews in Kōhanga Reo is a specialist resource to inform the judgements that review officers make about the quality of children’s experiences while they are taking part in a kōhanga reo programme.