In South Auckland, New Zealand—particularly in the communities of Clendon and Weymouth—many children were starting school without prior participation in early childhood education (ECE). These communities, which include large Māori and Pacific Island populations, had participation rates well below national averages.

Although government policy had expanded access and funding for early childhood education, local centres still struggled to maintain full enrolment and consistent attendance. Many children who were enrolled attended irregularly, limiting the benefits of early learning experiences.

For participating centers, the problem was not a lack of commitment to children and families—but the absence of practical systems to understand their own data, test improvements, and learn what strategies actually increased enrolment and attendance.

Commission & Launch:

• The Ministry of Education’s Early Learning Taskforce partnered with Ko Awatea—the innovation and improvement center for Counties Manukau Health—to support early childhood centers in Clendon and Weymouth. Seven centers voluntarily joined a collaborative improvement effort focused on increasing enrolment and attendance.

Understand the System:

• Participating centers began collecting and analyzing weekly enrolment and attendance data—something most had never previously done for improvement purposes. Using simple Excel tools and run charts, teams could see variation in performance and identify where participation gaps existed.

Focus the Work:

• Through facilitated learning sessions, teams developed driver diagrams that mapped the factors influencing enrolment and attendance—such as affordability, transportation, family awareness of services, and relationships with caregivers. These shared theories helped centers focus their efforts on the most promising areas for change.

Generate Ideas for Change:

• Staff generated practical ideas tailored to their local communities, including improving enrolment processes, strengthening relationships with families, communicating through community networks, and creating more welcoming environments for children and caregivers.

  These ideas were aligned with the Model for Improvement, enabling teams to test them systematically in practice.

Learn in Practice:

• Between collaborative learning sessions, centers ran rapid Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles to test their ideas. Teams used weekly data and run charts to determine whether their changes were producing improvement, adapting ideas based on real-world learning.

  Regular coaching and peer learning across centers accelerated the spread of effective practices.

Sustain and Spread:

• By the end of the project, participating centers had built new capability in using data, testing ideas, and learning collaboratively. These routines enabled staff to continue improving enrolment and attendance even after the formal project ended.

  The success of the pilot also informed the expansion of a larger collaborative involving dozens of additional centers across New Zealand.

Over six months, the collaborative significantly improved both enrolment and attendance across participating early childhood centers.

• Overall enrolment increased from 76.4% to 88.9%

• Attendance increased from 44.9% to 59.2%

• Seven centers developed new capability to collect, analyze, and act on their own improvement data

These improvements were achieved without additional government funding—demonstrating that frontline educators, when supported with improvement methods and collaborative learning, can redesign local systems to increase access to early learning opportunities.

The project also showed that improvement science methods—widely used in healthcare—can be successfully adapted to education systems to address participation gaps and strengthen services for historically underserved communities.