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Quality early childhood education (ECE) affects how well all children do at school and in life – from academic achievement and earning potential to health and wellbeing. Quality ECE supports children to develop the social, emotional, communication, cognitive, and motor skills which enable them to thrive. This is particularly critical for disabled children as it sets the foundation for their future learning.

Quality early childhood education (ECE) affects how well disabled children do at school and in life – from academic achievement and earning potential, to health and wellbeing.

This good practice report looks at how children’s cultures and languages can be reflected in everyday practice, supporting their learning and wellbeing. Drawn from home-based ECE settings, this new report is a collection of useful examples to inspire kaiako to grow their ability in culturally responsive teaching. 

Receiving a quality education, from early childhood education (ECE) through to secondary school, positively affects how well all children and young people do at school and in life – from academic achievement and earning potential to health and wellbeing. Education is even more critical for disabled learners. When disabled learners receive a quality, inclusive education they are more likely to achieve better outcomes, to complete secondary schooling and to go on to further study and employment.

Early childhood education services had to quickly adapt to changing requirements and periods of uncertainty due to Covid-19 in 2020. ERO undertook work to understand how this affected early childhood education services. This report presents our findings on how Covid-19 impacted children, whānau and services, how services responded and what they learnt, and the challenges that services expect they might face in future alert level changes.

Starting school is a major childhood event. It can be an exciting time for children and their families. But it is a big change, and so it can also be an uncertain time. A good start at school sets children up to succeed at school. We looked to see how changing to cohort entry impacts on children, their peers, and whānau, as well as their schools and early childhood education services.

Starting school is a major childhood event. It can be an exciting time for children and their families. But it is a big change and can be an uncertain time. Since 2018, schools have been able to have children start in groups at certain dates during the year. This is called cohort entry. ERO found that cohort entry has a range of benefits for children’s wellbeing and learning, schools’ ability to structure transitions more easily, and for teachers due to fewer disruptions and more time to teach.

This report looks at how well science is led in services and schools, how well science is woven through the curriculum, and how well kaiako/ teachers include science in a responsive curriculum. Each section of this report provides leaders, kaiako, and teachers with reflective questions to consider, which could support improvements. We also identify opportunities for improvement at both the individual service / school level, and for the system.

ERO has a comprehensive and fast-tracked work programme underway to understand the ongoing impact of Covid-19 on students, services and schools, and on teaching and learning in Aotearoa New Zealand in the English and Māori medium education sectors.

This report is the companion report to Science in the Early Years: Early Childhood and Years 1-4. This report looks at, in more depth, good practice in science teaching and learning in English-Medium early childhood education. It presents examples of good practice of science in the curriculum, from eight services identified during their ERO reviews.

The Education Review Office (ERO), in partnership with the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the Office for Disability Issues (ODI), looked at how well the education system is supporting disabled learners in schools. We found that we need to improve education for disabled learners so they can thrive. This report describes what we found and what is needed to significantly improve education for these priority learners.

This work explores global best practice for measuring education system change. It considers the variation found between different approaches to measuring education system change, looking particularly at how select individual countries and multilaterals each approach this.  This work will also consider what can support countries to monitor education performance.   

Each year, Alternative Education provides education to over 2,000 young people who have been disengaged from education and who have high and complex needs. The Education Review Office (ERO), in partnership with the Social Wellbeing Agency (SWA), looked at how well the education system is supporting young people in Alternative Education. This study describes what we found and what is needed to significantly improve education for these young people.