01-05-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Māori children should matter in our mainstream schools
In a recent interview with Mihi Forbes, Education Minister Erica Stanford discussed how the minister intended to improve outcomes for Māori children in mainstream 90% of Māori children attend mainstream schools, where they generally do worse than their peers, while those children in kura kaupapa Māori (Māori-medium education) thrive, outperforming their mainstream peers.
A 2021 report on the successes of kura kaupapa Māori said one of the key markers was that kaiako (teachers) and kaimahi (staff) were competent and knowledgeable in tikanga, te reo Māori and Māori knowledge.
So it was good to hear the minister's enthusiastic response to the questions of how she planned to address the disparity for Māori children and what lessons could be learned from kura kaupapa Māori.
"If we are serious about closing the equity gap and having a bilingual education system — which we are — then we have to equitably resource it," she said.
However, when pressed on specific actions and what approaches mainstream schools could adopt from Māori-medium success, her response was much vaguer: "There's probably something we need to learn here in the mainstream ... to implement some of those successful things [from Māori-medium schools]."
At a fundamental level, one of those "some things to learn" — as highlighted by educators like Rawiri Wright, co-chair of Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa — is integrating the Māori world view into mainstream schooling to lift achievement for Māori students.
The minister was circumspect on this and could not identify anything specific that she might bring into or support in mainstream schools.
Which was very odd, because one of those specifics is the success of resource teachers: Māori and resource teachers: literacy. She has successful programmes in operation right now, in mainstream schools, that she could enhance with more funding.
Jeanette Fitzsimons once said to me that to understand a government's environmental policy, you had to look at its economic policy. That would tell you the truth of its intentions.
The same logic applies here: if we want to see the government's true priorities for Māori education, we need only look at what it funds and what it cuts.
And what does that reveal for Māori children? The government is cutting funding for 174 specialist teaching roles — resource teachers: literacy (121 roles) and resource teachers: Māori (53 roles) — who work in both mainstream and Māori-medium schools.
Resource teachers: Māori support bilingual and immersion programmes in schools, assisting teachers with curriculum planning and implementation.
They provide teacher education in te reo and tikanga Māori and deliver professional learning and development for teachers. They help to produce high-quality resources and activities.
They work closely with educators to assist with student assessment and programme evaluation. They help teachers to become more competent and knowledgeable in teaching Māori children.
They are experts in fostering an inclusive and culturally rich learning environment for both students and teachers.
So what is the justification for cutting these expert roles?
A claim that this will create a "more efficient" support system.
We've seen this before, cuts marketed as "efficiency" leading to substandard services that harm children — hello, David Seymour's Food in Schools programme.
There is no reason to expect Ms Stanford's "efficiency" cuts will be any different.
There are only two resource teachers: Māori in the Otago region and three in the Southland region.
These front-line resource teachers are already overworked and under-resourced, yet they provide critical support for students, their whānau and their teachers. They could do so much more with just a little more.
When asked about the cuts to these Otago and Southland roles, National MP for Southland Joseph Mooney responded: "These services are inequitably distributed, not achieving the coverage we need and creating large-scale inefficiencies where individual staff are trying to cover huge geographic areas and multiple schools across large clusters."
Yes, quite, Mr Mooney. The inequity and the workload problems you identify justify increasing resources for the critical programme, not cutting it for some unclear, unproven "optimised education workforce model".
This ill-conceived decision to cut these expert resource teachers is a direct assault on bilingual and immersion programs in state schools and on the children, Māori and Pākehā, that these programmes serve.
The cuts undermine proven methods that help Māori students succeed.
While the minister claims she wants Māori children to succeed in mainstream schools and to learn from successful Māori education models, her funding priorities tell the real story: Māori students matter less in mainstream schools.
■Metiria Stanton Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
