Rationale: (why do we need this policy?)
Tamariki and their whānau have the right to access, participate in and receive equitable and high-quality education and care at Crossways. The Crossway’s learning community has a responsibility for sustaining inclusiveness for all tamariki, ensuring each child equitable opportunities to reach their potential as learners within our curriculum. Inclusive curriculum should reflect the diversity of its communities of learners, respecting all gender and ethnicity, diversity of ability and learning needs, family structure and values, socioeconomic status and religion.
Objectives: (What do we hope to achieve?)
Tamariki are seen to be inherently competent, capable and rich, complete and gifted.
Uphold all tamariki’s ability, identity, culture, and sense of belonging, empowering each to access the full depth and breadth of learning opportunities (access).
Implement a curriculum that respects and responds to each child’s diverse interests, learning approaches and needs through an emerging curriculum (participation).
Foster a culture of critical thinking in order to confront bias and discrimination and remove or reduce barriers to learning (support).
Guidelines: (How will we achieve it?)
Responding to the unique abilities and strengths of each child in the learning community should be an ongoing journey, fuelled by reflective and reciprocal relationships which value diverse ways of seeing and being including seeing the child through the parents eye’s and aspirations, listening to the child’s voice and actions, seeking to know the child well, gathering knowledge from those more experienced, including their whānau and other specialists.
Inclusive practice occurs within a climate of acceptance and warmth, where close, reciprocal relationships are based on respect for the diversity and mana of each child and their whānau.
By respectfully acknowledging and being responsive to the identities, languages, and cultures of the tamariki who attend Kaiako create an environment where tamariki develop self-esteem and confidence about who they are and their place in the world.
Planning for learning includes curriculum design (teaching methods and learning goals), relationships, physical arrangement of the environment, and learning materials so each child has equal opportunities to meaningfully engage in all aspects of the learning environment.
Kaiako actively invite, acknowledge, and celebrate the diversity that each child and their whānau bring, embracing alternatives to the ‘norm’ and showing support for individual family make-up.
Kaiako build positive relationships with all tamariki, parents, and whānau, including those with additional needs which may be related to health, physical, emotional, social, cultural, and/or spiritual.
Kaiako communicate effectively with other kaiako, parents, whānau and support agency partners and specialists to ensure they are providing a curriculum that supports the learning of all tamariki
From our bicultural foundation, our curriculum affirms and celebrates cultural differences, and aims to help tamariki gain a positive awareness of their own and other cultures.
Leadership encourages reflective, responsive practices that protect and promote an inclusive curriculum for all tamariki.
The curriculum enables the community of learners (tamariki, family, kaiako and others) to weave their perspectives, values, cultures, and languages into the Crossways setting.
Leadership support continual development for all Kaiako, to ensure that they are trained in an equality and diversity approach to providing care and education.
An anti-bias approach is implemented by continually reviewing, working in partnership with families, reflective practice, and in consultation with tamariki and their families
Kaiako actively seek to support learning and participation that does not hinder or exclude individual tamariki or groups of tamariki, equality of opportunity must be a reality for all tamariki
Tamariki’s individual plans are woven into the curriculum to ensure the environment, experiences, events are accessible to all.
When individual tamariki need help to explore the environment, kaiako will make modifications to support their participation.
References
Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008, Reg. 43 (b), Criteria C2
The Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early Childhood Curriculum (Te Whāriki) (Ministry of Education [MoE], 2017)
https://tewhariki.tki.org.nz/en/teaching-strategies-and-resources/contribution/inclusive-practice/
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child2.1
Approved date: March 2022 Review date: March 2024