2026 Autumn Launch

This week we hosted our 2026 Autumn Launch keynote, and we had a lot to share. If you missed it, you can watch the full recording here. Otherwise, here's a rundown of everything we announced.

Grow

Grow is our biggest announcement of the day - a full professional growth and development platform for educators, launching today. It's built around five pillars: practice observation, peer-to-peer mentoring, professional development plans, alignment with teaching standards, and continuous professional learning.

Grow Journeys apply the same journey technology behind child learning to teacher growth. Mentoring sessions are tracked inside Mana, with Coach Sue automatically extracting follow-ups and suggested goals from recorded sessions. Standards alignment - including the National Quality Standards, EYLF, Te Whāriki, and registered teaching standards - is filled in automatically as educators work. Leaders get a real-time dashboard showing progress across the whole team, shifting the focus from quantity of documents to quality of practice.

Grow is available now on enterprise plans.

More Docs

We've expanded Mana's document suite from a handful of document types to nearly 20 - including learning stories, reflections, planning, summative and formative assessments, and more. Coach Sue adapts her guidance to each document type, helping educators create the right kind of documentation for every moment. This update is already live.

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Knowledge

(Available in Beta)

Knowledge lets your service upload internal resources - policies, procedures, your QIP, QPTs, internal evaluations - directly into Mana. Once uploaded, Coach Sue is automatically trained on everything within seconds. Educators can ask Sue questions about your centre's practices and policies in real time, dramatically reducing the time it takes for new staff to get up to speed. Knowledge is available in beta now.
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Live

(Coming Soon to Mana Labs)

Live is designed to solve one of the most common frustrations in early childhood education: documentation pulling teachers away from children. With Live, educators simply hold down the microphone to capture voice observations while remaining present with the children in their care. Photos can be snapped without worrying about organisation. When educators step away, Coach Sue processes all of it - suggesting document types, placement, and structure - so nothing is lost and no time is wasted. Live is coming soon as part of Mana Labs.

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Program

(Coming Soon to Mana Labs)

Programme takes Mana into the world of group learning and room-level programming. It's designed to support the full picture of holistic child development - connecting individual learning with emergent programming, team alignment, and quality measurement. Coach Sue extends into Programme to guide educators through each step. Programme is launching in closed beta first, with a deep dive session scheduled for 27 March 2026. More details to come.

Plus: more updates coming soon

Alongside the major launches, we also shipped chat updates and better printing (both out now), with more on the way: OWNA integration, Microsoft Entra ID, HB/FDC network support, writing improvements, and a more intuitive Child Journeys experience - all coming soon.