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Would your documentation hold up if the call came tomorrow?

Regulatory authorities generally give one to five days' notice of a site visit. Ten honest questions, two minutes, and nothing leaves your browser. You get the gaps a review conversation would surface, in the order worth fixing them.

  1. 1

    Coverage

    Could you list every child and when they were last documented, today?

    It is the easiest thing for an outsider to check: a list of names and a list of dates. If it cannot be produced quickly, it usually means nobody has looked recently.

  2. 2

    Coverage

    This term, how many children have nothing recorded at all?

    The quiet child who never causes a fuss is the one who goes unseen, and the gap is visible in ninety seconds to anyone reading a roll against documentation.

  3. 3

    Planning cycle

    Do stories carry a next step for that child?

    An observation with no next step stops the cycle at noticing. The planning half of assessment and planning is the half that goes missing.

  4. 4

    Planning cycle

    When a next step is tried, is what happened written down?

    This is the part almost nobody records, and it is the part that proves a cycle rather than a pile. Six stories where the loop closes say more than twenty that stop at the plan.

  5. 5

    Critical reflection

    Is critical reflection written down anywhere an assessor could see?

    ACECQA's guidance accepts short jottings and brief notes, not only formal writing. The problem is not the format, it is that the thinking happened in a conversation and left no trace.

  6. 6

    Critical reflection

    Can you point to something that changed because of reflection?

    Element 1.3.2 asks whether reflection drives planning. Reflection that never changed anything reads as a writing exercise.

  7. 7

    Family voice

    Where do family contributions end up?

    A parent's knowledge that lives in a messaging app is not in the child's documentation, and 1.3.3 is about what families are told and what they contribute.

  8. 8

    Family voice

    Do families get a point-in-time summary of their child's progress?

    Assessors may look for summaries and, for children heading to school, transition statements. Photos alone are not progress information.

  9. 9

    Readiness

    Could an educator walk one child's full cycle in two minutes?

    This is the actual conversation. An assessor picks a name and asks what you noticed, what you made of it, what you planned, what happened and what the family said.

  10. 10

    Readiness

    Does your self-assessment name a real weakness?

    A QIP claiming no weaknesses is treated worse than one naming a genuine area for improvement and what is being done about it. Self-assessment is meant to be honest, not flattering.

What your answers say

0 of 10 answered

Answer the questions above and this fills itself in.

This is your own self-check, not a rating and not a prediction of any assessment outcome. Nothing you answered left your browser. If it is useful, print it and take it to a staff meeting.

Questions directors ask

How much notice does a service get before an assessment and rating visit?

ACECQA's process page says regulatory authorities generally provide one to five days' notice that a site visit will occur. An assessment that commences in response to compliance issues may commence without notice. That is the reason this check is worth doing in a quiet month rather than a busy one.

Is this a compliance rating?

No, and treat anything claiming to be one with suspicion. This reflects your own answers back to you in priority order. It has no access to your service, produces no score, and predicts nothing about an assessment outcome.

Where do my answers go?

Nowhere. The questions are answered in your browser, nothing is sent to a server, and there is no signup. Close the tab and it is gone, which is why it is safe to answer question two honestly.

Does it apply in Aotearoa as well as Australia?

The questions are about documentation practice, so both. ERO works from a service's own internal evaluation against Te Whāriki, and the underlying questions land in the same place: what you noticed, what you did about it, what happened, and how whānau contributed.

We found gaps. What now?

Take the top two to your next staff meeting with the first moves attached. Most gaps here are recording gaps rather than practice gaps, which means the thinking already happened and nobody wrote it down.

Longer reading: the evidence to have ready and what Standard 1.3 asks for.

Written by Leo, who builds StoryLoop, in Ōtautahi Christchurch