Swings + Roundabouts Summer 2020

quality evaluation is an academic discipline and should be reflected in ERO’s capability, either at head office influencing the review approach, or at the review team level. ● ERO have, to date, resisted the opportunity to offer suggestions/advice to centres based on best practice. This is, however, a hallmark of good quality evaluation practices and need not clash with ERO’s independence as a government agency. ● Finally, ERO’s world has changed. Recent legislative changes mean that ERO will be increasing their activity in reviewing home-based ECE services. On top of this, the splitting of assurance and quality evaluation functions increases the workload. There is also a concern within the wider education sector that ERO’s functions and those of the Ministry of Education are blurring, with the latter engaged increasingly in spot checks and compliance audit visits. If ERO is to be the education agency responsible for Assurance Reviews and Quality Evaluations, they must be supported with the resources to do that job. The ECC remains critical of ERO in that we have offered what we believe to be workable options for an ERO/ECE Sector collaboration over reviews, which has so far been declined by ERO. We believe this response is short- sighted and should at least be trialled. It involves working with centre managers whose centres have achieved a high level of quality in a recent review, being upskilled to assist in the review of other centres. Then sub-contracted two or three times over a six-month period to be part of an ERO review team to review other centres where there is no competitive relationship. AN IDEAL APPROACH Assurance Review An Assurance Review should be tough but needs to be sufficiently transparent so that centres understand the compliance requirements that are non-negotiable and those that must be met but that won’t cost them their license. The problem here is that this presently tends to vary depending on the reviewer. An Assurance Review should start with the reviewer seeking to understand how the centre approaches its compliance within its context. “How do we do compliance here?” The reviewer should be looking for a policy, or rule that defines the centre’s commitment to compliance and that describes the system to ensure compliance occurs and is monitored. Having obtained that understanding, the Reviewer can then go looking for evidence of compliance, consistent with the centre’s compliance system, and may offer suggestions or advice on improvements. Quality Evaluation A Quality Evaluation is an external examination of the quality performance of a centre in those specific areas described in ERO’s Quality Indicators. Again, the Reviewer should seek to understand how the centre approaches quality improvement in their context, as an ongoing or continuous process. This process should encompass all aspects of the centre’s structure and service delivery – everything they do. As such, the centre’s approach to quality improvement may be broader that the 21 indicators highlighted by ERO. And again, the centre’s context plays a central role. The centre may have a written Quality Improvement Policy – describing “the way we do quality here”. The process outlined should include the high-level rule and commitment toward ongoing quality improvement and a continuous (six-monthly?) cycle of whole- of-centre internal evaluations feeding into a prioritised quality improvement plan. Evidence that the plan’s progress is being monitored and that the plan itself is being refreshed regularly following each internal evaluation. Armed with an understanding of the centre’s approach to continuous quality improvement, the Reviewer can then seek out evidence and examples of quality improvement in those areas of the centre’s activities described by ERO’s Quality Indicators. Where the Assurance Review either demonstrates compliance or not, the Quality Evaluation should highlight the extent to which the centre is able to demonstrate improvement in the areas of ERO’s interest. This is about the journey, not pass or fail. December 2020 { 19 }