What is quality ECE?
- Teachers take time to listen and respond in ways that extended children’s learning.
-Managers and Teachers hold high expectations for all children.
-Teachers are interested in who your child is and what they bring to their learning.
-Teachers interactions with children create opportunities for meaningful conversations that provoke and extend children's thinking.
-Assessment practice (Learning portfolios) enables educators to notice, recognise and respond to children’s emerging interests and strengths.
-Safe inclusive environment.
-Children are respected, supported and challenged in their learning.
-Children are happy, confident learners who are included and listened to.
-Children's progress, achievements and successes are acknowledged and supported.
-Relationships between Teachers (and staff), parents and whānau, based on mutual trust and respect, strengthen partnerships for learning.
-Low staff turn over
-Qualified experienced Early Childhood Teachers
-Low child to Teacher ratios
-On-going professional learning and development for Teachers
-Manager with experience, vision and leadership
-No rigid routines
-Well resourced
-Willingness and motivation to engage in self-reflection and change/improve practice
-Engage with relevant professional learning and development
-Teachers have responsive relationships with children, become able to recognize cues or attempts at communicating.
-Day not driven by imposed routines, but instead individual child's needs
-No adult-directed activities, and rote learning methods, where adults decide what children do, and when and how they should do particular activities.
-No interactions that direct and control children
-Teachers that interact with children during meal times.
-Teachers that see opportunities to increase the complexity of children’s learning through their play and current interests
-Grass areas, gardens and natural resources available to children
-A good understanding of self review
-A professional commitment to supporting self review
-An awareness of the value and purpose of self review
The Education Review Office identifies poor quality education and care: http://www.ero.govt.nz/publications/quality-in-early-childhood-services/poor-quality-education-and-care/