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Principal slams Stanford's scrapping of Māori words in readers

The cover of At the Marae. Photo: Screenshot / Ministry of Education A Māori educator says children shouldn't have to wait until year 2 to learn Māori words. Education Minister Erica Stanford has imposed a near total ban on Māori in new additions to a series of books used to teach five-year-olds to read. A ministry document showed Stanford decided on the near-ban last October because she was worried five-year-olds would be confused by Māori words in the Education Ministry's Ready to Read Phonics Plus series. At the same time, she ruled that one of the 27 books that already contained Māori words should be re-sized as a big book and would not be reprinted as a 'reader' that children could take home or read together in groups. She also told officials to ensure that Māori pronunciation was explicitly taught from children's second year at school - a first for the English curriculum. Stanford later told RNZ the decision about future books would affect only 12 books that were being developed to complete the series. A principal at a Wellington kura kaupapa and joint national chair of Te Rūnanga nui o ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa Rawiri Wright told Morning Report Māori was a national language and ought to be taught at the earliest opportunity. Wright said the government's argument was ridiculous. He said the government edict was also only affecting three to six words words per book. "That's less than 4 percent of all of the words in all of those readers. ....It's the national language of this country so it ought to be being taught at the earliest opportunity. They shouldn't have to wait to year 2 to be introduced to Māori words and it's not going to confuse kids." He said phonetics in Māori were more consistent than in English, and some were even similar. It was simply a case of children learning to recognise them. "Learning English is far more difficult than learning Māori, so the sooner they can be introduced to Māori, and therefore any other language further down the track, so much the better for tamariki." He believed the minister had based her decisions on "bad advice".