Rankings

ERO publishes a four-point overall judgement (Not well placed / Requires further development / Well placed / Very well placed) for each Akanuku Assurance Review. For newer Akarangi reports, the four-point scale isn't used. To get a consistent quality signal across all reports, we additionally extract a letter grade (A / B / C / D) for each of six dimensions from the ERO report prose using a fixed rubric and Claude Haiku 4.5.

The six dimensions:

• Curriculum — Te Whāriki alignment, planning, intentional teaching.
• Wellbeing — child agency, emotional safety, transitions.
• Whānau partnership — communication, family voice in planning, cultural responsiveness.
• Bicultural practice — te reo, tikanga, treaty-honouring practice.
• Health & safety — supervision, regulatory compliance, premises.
• Leadership — qualified-teacher ratio, internal evaluation, governance.

Composite ERO score = A grades × 4 + B grades × 2 + C grades × 0 + D grades × −3. Some lists (e.g. Best for Under-2s, Best Kōhanga Reo) weigh specific dimensions more heavily; each ranking page names its formula.

Eligibility: a centre needs at least three graded dimensions to appear in ERO-based lists. Centres without an ERO review yet — about 4 percent of the directory, mostly newly-licensed services — don't appear in rankings. That's deliberate: we never penalise a centre for ERO not having reviewed it.

See the full methodology and per-centre data sources.