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It's been a busy week, with the "Future for Children" early childhood policy forum being held this week.  This is why you are receiving the newsletter on Friday evening and not earlier in the day because we are doing catch up today.   We hope you will still get to read it over the weekend or on Monday. 

If you weren't at the policy forum - you should have been.  It was an amazing gathering of participants from across the political spectrum, with different world views and representing different interests.  What we all held in common was that we valued children and sought the best for children.  The speakers articulated problems, joys, and future directions and possibilities  for early childcare and education and provided us with much food for thought as well as new insights and understandings.  See further information about this in this newsletter.

Next week look out for:

1. A big feature we will be putting online on the topic of home-based early childcare and education. 
2. Our release of further new material and analysis of what the NZ regulation amendment change to increase the licence change (number of children in centres) will mean - and this may be nail-biting stuff for policy-makers.
3. An article reviewing information on what educators, including parents, and service managers can do to support literacy teaching and learning in early childhood programmes.

AND - if that's not enough.  We have some fabulous news to share with you, and will tell you more about this next week.  Here's a hint ... After providing a national series of workshops for educators on protecting young children's  hearing and practical tips for improving early childhood environments for children and adults, ChildForum is continuing its partnership with the National Foundation for the Deaf to help to make the very useful and much needed Safe Sound Indicator (a noise monitor) available to all home and centre-based services.   

News

A nine month investigation by the Serious Fraud Office has closed for Kidicorp.   Kidicorp MD Wayne Wright says "we never thought we had done anything wrong. An employee who stole from us threatened to go to the SFO if we handed the file to the Police to prosecute. We weren’t intimidated and were later told she did go to the SFO. We were confident we had nothing to hide."   Read more by clicking here ...

What's New

Minister of Education Speech on Early Childhood Policy

On the Government's Beehive Website read a speech given by the Minister of Education yesterday at the early childhood national policy forum.  Click here to go to the page ...

ERO Report on Literacy Shows Challenges for Service Managers, Educators and the ECE Sector

The Education Review Office 2011 report on Literacy in Early Childhood Services was released by the Minister of Education at ChildForum's early childhood national policy forum.

The ERO report shows how literacy is valued and practised in early childhood services.  The data presented in the report cover 350 teacher and parent-led early childhood services and 3 home-based networks reviewed by ERO during Term 4, 2009 and Term 1, 2010.

A difficulty with the presentation of findings in the report is that the findings are reported as general statements and figures are not often given.  The words "many", "most", and "some" are used to describe number and frequency.

Generally the findings show that things could be a lot better in regards to literacy teaching and learning across the early childhood services reviewed.   A big tick is given for educators in most services holding a shared understanding of literacy and teaching.  

Some concerning findings are:

• Only about half of the services referred to literacy in their philosophy statement
• While most services budgeted for literacy related resources, in many of these services there was "evidence of ad hoc purchases of books, art and writing materials, and computer software with no specific learning purpose in mind" (p. 15)
• Almost half did not differentiate their provision for literacy teaching and learning for boys and girls - boys in particular were found to not be well catered for, finding literacy activities to be boring and formal programmes uninteresting.
• In regards to supporting the learning of Maori children, many services incorporated basic instructions and greetings but did not extend further.
• 60% of services did not have at least some focus on literacy outcomes as part of self-review.   "Generally, literacy review was not well embedded in services' practice.  It was mostly informal, lacked timeframes and did not focus on how services knew literacy teaching and learning had improved" (p. 32).

ERO recommends that the Ministry of Education review the information and expectations for literacy available to early childhood services.  Read more and add your comments by clicking here ...

As a free benefit of ChildForum membership - on Friday 8th April we will release exclusively for members information about literacy teaching and learning to assist early childhood managers, teachers, and parents.   If you are not already a member click here to join ...    Or, contact us for a membership application form. 

Report from the Future for Children Policy Forum