Establishing an ECE service
Establishing an early childhood education service is a big undertaking. Centre based services, home based services, kōhanga reo and hospital based services are all small businesses.
Like any other small business you need to have a good understanding of your market, the quality standards for your service and any regulations that you need to comply with. You will need a good understanding of business practices and what is required when receiving government funding.
The quality of an Early Childhood Education service is central to early childhood education’s contribution to positive outcomes for children. What seems to matter for positive outcomes is:
- the quality of staff-child interaction,
- the learning resources available,
- programmes that engage children, and
- a supportive environment for children to work together.
Considerable planning and effort is required for effective communication with families, whānau and communities: listening and responding. Engaging parents and whānau in the ongoing assessment of children’s learning and sharing educational aims with parents could help improve the home learning environment and reinforce learning between home and the early childhood education service. This is a potentially powerful role for early childhood education services.
Establishing an Early Childhood Education service is a guide which is presented in seven steps. This guide takes you through the process of establishing a quality early childhood education service.
The information is presented as steps because you need to follow the process in a particular order. Decisions you make early on will impact on later decisions - for example, the kind of service you establish (Step 1) may affect the design of your building (Step 2).
We suggest that you read through all the steps to begin with as this will help you decide what skills and knowledge you will need.
The information includes suggestions, as well as information that is legally required.
- If the information is a suggestion, it is not compulsory.
- If it is a legal requirement, it is compulsory.
You are welcome to use and/or download any information provided on this site. Where links take you to external sites, you should check the copyright statements of those sites before making further use of that information. At this point in time this information talks about how to establish a centre-based early childhood education service.
A guide – titled Establishing a Home-Based Early Childhood Education Service – is under development.