Design that supports service quality: New Zealand’s model

The Education Review Office (ERO) is both nationally and internationally renowned for its unique design for school evaluation, which has a bearing on schools and childhood centres on key indicators like school governance and management, curriculum management and quality of teaching, school safety and hygiene, internal evaluation, discipline, and pupil‐teacher ratio. Applying items relating to red tape and technology, this paper examines the impact of ERO design, based primarily on the perceptions of 78 stakeholders. Document analysis and e´lite interviews were used to triangulate the findings. The design items were perceived to significantly account for the current appealing ERO performance. Though more research needs to be done in this area to establish the impact of other potential predictors of ERO performance, based on an array of existing theoretical propositions and empirical results on organisational effectiveness, the findings in this study support proponents of the view that this variable is an indispensable facet for organisational good practice.