Understanding the Education Review Office (ERO)
The Education Review Office is the government agency that evaluates how well early childhood services and schools support children’s learning and wellbeing. It also publishes national reports that identify sector trends and findings from its evaluations. ERO was established to provide independent, public assurance about the quality of education in Aotearoa.
You won’t find an ERO review for every early childhood service on the ERO website, and many of the reports that do exist are are four or five years old or more. It’s important to check other sources too. The national register of early childhood services on the ECE Parents’ Council website, provides some details on service standards, parent reviews, and ratings. ERO reports are useful, but they should be read alongside other evidence when judging a service’s current quality.
A Major Shift: ERO as Regulator (as well as Evaluator)
On 1 September 2026, all early childhood regulatory functions were transferred from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office. This included licensing, compliance monitoring, incident investigation, and enforcement. Every Ministry role responsible for these functions was disestablished and not transferred to ERO, because ERO stated that its regulatory approach would be different from the Ministry’s.
This shift is one of the most significant changes in early childhood governance since childcare was brought under the Department of Education in 1986 alongside kindergartens, schools, and tertiary education. Schools and tertiary education remain regulated by the Ministry of Education. Moving ECE regulatory functions to ERO signals that early childhood education is now being treated differently from the rest of the education system, and more like a market service than a public good. This change alters the long‑standing expectation that ECE sits within a unified public education framework.
When the Ministry regulated ECE, it gained first‑hand insight into service practice, risks, and emerging issues. This practical knowledge informed its policy advice, the licensing criteria it continues to draft, and the funding rules it administers. Without direct oversight of services, the Ministry of Education has lost a key source of evidence about what is happening on the ground. This weakens its ability to identify risks early, respond to emerging issues, and provide robust, evidence‑based advice to government.
Education Review Office reviewers are trained to build trust and evaluate to support the service to make improvements. Regulators must check compliance, issue sanctions, and make decisions that can shut a service down. When one agency is asked to do both, those responsibilities clash. We are already seeing this play out. Education Review Office staff who are expected to act as both reviewers and regulators default to the reviewer role. They are supportive and relationship‑focused, not focused on compliance, and not firm or decisive in compliance situations.
Issues Facing the Education Review Office
ERO is a small, pressured agency with a troubled recent record, and yet it is now responsible for regulating and judging ECE services, along with responding to complaints and incidents.
- ERO’s 2024 Savings Programme required cuts to contractors, recruitment, travel, and changes to its ECE review methodology. Even after these reductions, ERO reported that further savings were still needed.
- The 2025 Public Service Census found that 66% of Education Review Office staff felt workloads and staffing levels prevented them from performing at their best – one of the highest rates in the public sector. Education Review Office also recorded the highest proportion of dissatisfied staff across all 41 agencies surveyed.
- An OIA response from the Public Service Commission in 2025 confirmed that no steps had been taken to improve ERO’s workplace culture or strengthen health, safety, and wellbeing support for staff.
- ERO cycled through multiple chief executives between September 2025 and July 2026. It had no permanent CEO for almost a year. Ruth Shinoda served as acting CEO until May 2026 before leaving on secondment; Tim Fowler then acted until David Ferguson’s appointment in July 2026.
- In August 2026 the Post reported that the Public Service Commission is investigating conduct and behaviour at ERO after multiple protected disclosures. King’s Counsel Mary Scholtens has interviewed dozens of current and former staff. According to reporting by Andrea Vance, Ruth Shinoda is understood to be central to the investigation. The inquiry focuses on the Education Review Office’s workplace culture, conduct, and leadership behaviour.
How often the Education Review Office reviews ECE services
For small or standalone ECE services (those not part of a group with 8 or more licences), the time between reviews can range from 1 to 5 years, with an average of around 3 years.
ERO no longer reviews every ECE service
If an ECE service is part of a large organisation with 8 or more services, the Education Review Office now reviews the governing organisation, not each individual service. This change was introduced as part of ERO’s Savings Programme. ERO has said the new approach helps it work more efficiently and reduce workload (ERO Savings Programme Q&As, 11 June 2024).
What ERO looks at in Governing Organisation Evaluations
ERO’s governing‑organisation evaluations focus on what the organisation knows about how its services are performing, and on its documented policies, systems, and processes. ERO may visit a small sample of individual services within the organisation, but it does not produce individual reports for those services.
This approach has significant consequences. Licence capacities are trending upward, and large organisations continue to grow by taking over existing services and opening new ones. The net effect is simple: more and more children are attending services that will never receive a full, individual ERO review.
As governing organisations expand, ERO’s sample‑based model means a rising proportion of services and a disproportionately large number of children are effectively invisible at the individual‑service level. Quality assurance becomes increasingly dependent on what the organisation reports about itself, rather than what ERO directly observes for children and families within their service.
The benefits of ERO’s reviews
ERO reviewers are trained in evaluation. When they visit an early childhood education (ECE) service, owners and managers must provide requested documentation and answer questions. This external review:
- Supports internal evaluation. The review process prompts services to examine their own practice and systems.
- Builds capacity. Reviewers routinely ask about a service’s own evaluation systems, which helps providers collect useful information and assess their policies and practice more critically.
- Highlights strengths and areas to improve. Reports give services clear feedback they can use to plan improvements.
From time to time, the Education Review Office gathers information on a specific topic – such as science, infant‑toddler care, or awareness of Te Whāriki – by reviewing services over a set period. It uses that information to produce a public report on the topic. These reports are valuable because the Education Review Office has legal access to services and service data that is often unavailable to researchers and other organisations.
How Much Should We Value ERO Reviews of ECE Services?
OPINION
Warwick Marshall
February 2016
If you have ever bought a car or a house you may have arranged a pre-purchase inspection report so you can be assured it isn’t a lemon or a leaky home. How much would you value a car inspection if done by a train mechanic?
You might feel better if it was done by a truck mechanic because a truck is more similar to a car than a train. Even better perhaps if a panel beater turned up. Though, perhaps you might have assumed the person inspecting the car would actually be experienced and qualified with, well, cars! A car mechanic perhaps?
How about Education Review Office reviews of ECE services? How much should we value and trust them?
Do you feel assured knowing that the reviewer will have some kind of tertiary qualification? Maybe you can rest easy knowing the reviewer will usually have some management experience in an educational setting. Do you feel better knowing the reviewer will have undergone a training process to become an evaluator and will participate in professional development? Though, perhaps you might have assumed the person reviewing an ECE service would actually be experienced and qualified in, well, ECE! An ECE teacher perhaps?
How many ERO reviewers are ECE, primary or secondary qualified? How many are without teaching qualifications? What proportion of ECE services are reviewed by an actual ECE qualified reviewer? Compare this with the proportion of primary and secondary schools reviewed by a reviewer with actual relevant qualifications. Unfortunately it seems that this data is currently unavailable.
For a house pre-purchase inspection would it make sense to have the builder inspect the wiring, the plumber to check the load bearing wall or the electrician to report on the kitchen sink? Certainly a qualified builder can inspect most things but you’ll find some very big disclaimers on the inspection report and advice to the buyer to consult with the ‘experts’ (electrician, plumber) to be sure of no problems. And, you’d be a mug if you’re a builder doing inspections without indemnity insurance; getting it wrong could cost you hundreds of thousands.
So what is the cost of ERO reviewers getting it wrong? It likely won’t cost the Education Review Office or the reviewers anything because no-one will know they got it wrong. But, the cost to the children could be on going misery, developmental problems and insecure futures all of which accumulate to massive costs to society.
However, maybe we need not fret because the Education Review Office assures that the specialist expertise needed is evaluation, not sector expertise. The reviewers follow a manual of standard procedures, use criteria and work in teams to make robust judgements. And, a partnership approach with the ECE service means their perspective contributes to the overall judgments too. Be reassured that a reviewer qualified in ECE may from time to time actually review an ECE service.
Past comments received from members on the Education Review Office
- One of the things I have always wondered about is the way centres know well in advance when the review is going to be so it is easy to get things up to date, bring in more equipment or staff for the day so things look better. How would it be using the motoring analogy if instead of roadside checks for warrants and registration you were sent a letter that in three months’ time you were to call in at your local police station on a certain day to show them you had a current warrant and registration and this happened every three years. I bet a lot of people would only get them done every three years and the rest of the time wouldn’t bother. This is how I think Education Review Office reviews work. There should be spot checks if they are to find anything out.
- I spoke to Iona Holsted the head of the Ministry of Education who a few years ago headed the Education Review Office, and I suggested spot checks to her. The response was lukewarm and as I recall was something along the lines of “We have too many centres to see to do spot checks”. I remain baffled by this when the ERO’s stated intention is “The child, the heart of the matter”. It seems to me that a more accurate statement would be “Paperwork, the heart of the matter”!
