Ero's Reviews Drive Up Quality Of Early Childhood

The Minister responsible for the Education Review Office, Brian Donnelly, said today that ERO's early childhood reviews are resulting in a continuing improvement in a fast-growing sector.

"Contrary to the claims of Labour MP Trevor Mallard, ERO has not 'failed' the sector, and has done everything the Government has asked it to do for early childhood education," Mr Donnelly said.

"The early childhood sector has generally performed well, and has been very responsive to external review. Because of this, the sector has required fewer reviews. However, the sector is very competitive and operators have often requested reviews more regularly than is justified."

ERO has introduced short-notice visits to early childhood centres as part of its strategy to provide assurance of good quality. This has largely been welcomed by the sector as high-performing centre managers are keen to see that childcare services as a whole are not brought into disrepute by the poor quality of some.

Mr Donnelly also pointed out that, not only did Trevor Mallard not do his homework on the issue, but he didn't even correctly copy a simple figure from an answer to a written Parliamentary question into his press release.

"Since January 1994 ERO has reviewed 44% of early childhood centres other than kohanga reo, not the 41% Mr Mallard claims."

"The first priority for reviews is in the compulsory sector (primary and secondary schools). Because the early childhood area has not caused as much concern, it has been the next priority. Strategically, the Government's resources are better used where they will have greater benefit."

Mr Donnelly said that Mr Mallard has also failed to recognise that the field is growing so fast that the demand for reviews is booming.

"In 1996/97 the Government increased ERO's funding for early childhood centre reviews, largely to cope with the increasing number of new centres. ERO will do around twice as many Assurance Audits this year as in the previous year."

Mr Donnelly said that ERO's reviews have promoted a demonstrable improvement in the level of care and security of young children in early childhood centres in the past four years.

"Now that the public can have greater assurance about the quality of care provided by most centres, ERO is concentrating on the quality of education programmes based on the early childhood curriculum. Among the areas it will look at are the quality of interactions between adults and children in the centres, and the quality of the language the children are using."