Homebased: ECE Returns

To complete the service Census report yearly, administrators will navigate:

1. To the Ministry tab
2. ECE Returns
3. Next to the date range, select Submit Return

The administrators will need to check they have completed the following:

Please note: Homebased Services are not typically required to add Educators to the Roster but to submit the Census Data, they must be added in. This can be done when completing the return. 

Preparing to Submit

Child Attendance

Navigate to the Attendance screen and check that there are no errors for the date range.

Staff Information

This can be updated under the staff members profile.

1. Navigate to the Staff tab
2. Select the team member
3. On the first tab, Staff Details, scroll down to the ECE Yearly Census Details and ensure these are up to date for current year. 
4. Press Save at the bottom of the screen

The data collected in this return provides information about your ECE service that is not collected elsewhere. The Ministry of Education will provide advance notice of the dates for the ECE Return week.

Submitting

ECE Return Week

Start date for the return week specified by the Ministry of Education.

Wait Times at Your Service

Waiting times provide an indication of how long children wanting to start attending an ECE service would have to wait before the service could take them in.

Teaching Languages at Your Service 

Teaching languages include all spoken languages and signed languages of communication used during the formal programme in your service.

Staff Activity for the ECE Return Week

At this section, scroll down to the blue message panel at the bottom of the screen. Click on ‘Create Rosters from Enrolments’.

Next, go through each Staff member one at a time by clicking on their name in the ECE Return screen. Check their information as below is correct, and for staff members where their Contact Hours are now pre-filled, click on the Reviewed Check Box, then click Save. 

Contact Hours 

For teaching staff, the actual contact start and finish times for all teachers who were teaching this week. A teacher can have multiple contact sessions on one day e.g. a session in the morning from 10am-12pm and a session in the afternoon from 1pm-3pm. Do not include non-contact time and breaks of 15 minutes or more in the contact hours. If a teacher was not present this week, do not enter contact hours. If you have used a relieving teacher during this week, add that teacher to your staff records and enter the relieving teacher’s contact hours.

For Coordinators, the ministry specifies the 'contact' hours for homebased coordinators are equivalent to being 'on duty' which means that coordinators are:

• mainly focused on, and involved in, supervising quality environments for educators and children in their service, and

• able to instantly respond to educators and parents in their service in person or over the phone.

Please note that 'on duty' does not include times when the coordinator cannot respond instantly to educators and parents in person or over the phone. The contact (on duty) start and finish times should be recorded for the specified days of the ECE Census week.

Age Band

For all staff except senior management and support staff, please record the applicable age band for each staff member by role.

Hours Worked

Provide the total number of hours the staff member worked at the service during the return week, including contact and non-contact time and breaks.