Latest news with #te reo Māori
RNZ News
21 hours ago
- Politics
- RNZ News
Government treating 'te reo Māori as less important', Principals' Federation says
Te Aro School teacher Serah Mehrtens reads 'At the Marae' to her class. She says her pupils have not struggled with Māori words in the book. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen Primary principals say debate over a book for junior readers has come at a time when teachers are on high alert over threats to te reo Māori in schools. Some reacted angrily when the Education Ministry announced one of 75 books in a series for learner readers had been reprinted as a big book, but not as a small book because its higher number of Māori words presented challenges for those learning to decode words. Te Akatea, the Māori principals' association, last week said the decision was racist , an accusation the ministry strongly refuted, pointing out that other books in the series had Māori words and insisting that the decision was based purely on educational reasons. Principals' Federation president Leanne Otene told RNZ educators were worried about any threats to the use of te reo in schools because the government had sidelined Māori names for government agencies. "It's not just one book, it's part of a concerning pattern of removing te reo Māori from government services across the board," she said. "When a government department stops using Māori names and phrases it sends a signal about what they value and our children are growing up watching their government treat te reo Māori as less important. What lesson does that send about their identity as New Zealanders... This feels like we are deliberately going backwards." Otene said all schools taught children Māori words and they should not be considered "foreign". "These are English words in New Zealand. When your child watches the All Blacks do the haka, they're not watching a foreign language. They're watching New Zealand culture, they're listening to New Zealand words. This won't confuse our struggling readers it's more concerning when a child can say a word but can't read it. These kids already know these words we're just helping them connect what they know to what they read," she said. "All New Zealand children benefit from understanding their country's culture. When we teach kids about Anzac Day we don't ask if they were personally connected to Gallipoli, we teach it because it's part of being a New Zealander." Rae Si'ilata advised schools on bilingual education. She said the structured literacy approach that all schools must now use to teach reading focused on teaching phonemes or sounds that occurred in the English language but it was important that children also learned Māori words and words from Pacific languages. "For Māori and Pacific children, reading meaningful text is fundamental to learning how to read at school. I see that with my own mokopuna, they are interested in reading text that is meaningful to them and that is connected to their own lives and experiences," she said. Si'ilata said an assumption that children would struggle with the "cognitive load" of another language was nonsense. "We are all on that bilingual continuum. We can easily cope with the idea that English and te reo Maori have different phonemes. They have a number of similar phonemes, but they also have a number of different phonemes or sounds," she said. Porirua principal Michelle Thwaites said her school used structured literacy along with the Pasifika Early Literacy Programme to teach children to read. "Learning to read for our tamariki is a mixture of languages, they come in with a mixture of languages so it's very normal for them," she said. Thwaites said schools needed more funding to help their teachers improve their command of Māori.
RNZ News
6 days ago
- General
- RNZ News
'Wouldn't overblow it' - Education Minister on maths book errors
Erica Stanford says it is not unusual to have errors in books. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER The Education Minister has thanked "keen bean" students for picking up errors in Ministry of Education-funded maths resources. Eighteen errors were spotted and fixed in new maths resources, including incorrect sums, a wrong number labelled in te reo Māori, and incorrectly saying "triangles" instead of "rectangles" in an answer. In one case, an answer to a problem in a Year 4 workbook was listed as 1024, and had to be changed to the correct answer of 19,875. In another workbook, the number four in te reo Māori (whā) was incorrectly written as two (rua). Erica Stanford said she "wouldn't overblow it," as there was, on average, half a mistake per book. "Those little eagle-eyed, keen bean students around the country who are now doing an hour a day of mathematics, picked them up and we've fixed them," she said. Stanford said it was not unusual to have errors in books, and they may have been there for a while as they were existing resources. "You find it quite often in books, and it's not just these maths books, you'll find the odd error here and there." The errors were immediately changed online, and would be fixed in re-prints for next year's release. A Ministry of Education list of the errors that have been resolved in maths resources. Photo: Supplied A Ministry of Education list of the errors that have been resolved in maths resources. Photo: Supplied A Ministry of Education bulletin sent to school leaders said the ministry was aware of the errors. "Our resource providers regularly review their print and digital resources to correct any errors that have been reported, and to ensure accuracy," it said. The ministry asked schools to contact it if they found any errors, including typos. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
04-08-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
University building AI tool to help te reo Māori learners with real time pronunciation feedback
The University of Auckland, Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin Auckland University is building a new AI tool that will give te reo Māori learners real time, personalised feedback on their pronunciation. The three-year project is funded with a $1 million research grant from the Ministry of Business and Innovation's Smart Ideas. Head of Auckland Universities' Te Puna Wananga, Dr Piata Allen told Checkpoint the idea is to give te reo Māori learners confidence so they use more te reo more of the time. Allen (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Hinemanu, Ngā Wairiki Ngāti Apa) said the AI tool will give real time feedback to users who are speaking te reo Māori and give feedback on the specific sounds they are making. "When you pronounce sounds you are... making different shapes with your mouth, you are positioning your tongue differently to make different sounds, so in order to make the sounds you want to make you've got to get those things right and what the app is going to do is to help you understand what the sounds are that you might be struggling with and how to correct that." The te reo Māori 'R' sound is one that can cause new learners some trouble, she said. "Quite commonly we say that you need to roll your Rs, however in te reo Māori actually the R sound is a tap or a flap. Which is quite similar to the sound you make when you say words like Daddy, Maddie, Paddy, those types of sounds, so you get that double d sound, that tap, you just tap the roof of your mouth once." Allen said the app will be able to explain to people the movement they need to make in order to get the sound they are trying to make and how to adjust. "Rather than just tell people that this is right and that is wrong we are able to give them a bit more specific feedback." Currently Auckland University runs an an online pronunciation course where students record themselves reading a bilingual text then switch between pronunciation, the tutors then listen to the sounds they are making and give them feedback on a syllable basis, she said. "That's quite labour intensive and quite time intensive and we aren't able to scale that as widely as we'd like, so incorporating AI into that process means we're able to give more people access." Allen said that giving feedback on articulation of sounds is a specific skill that people need to be trained in to do effectively. The language model will be trained on the existing repository of recorded te reo, such as from the archives of iwi radio stations, she said. "So we do have a significant repository of te reo Māori sounds, however what we will need to do is train a model around the acceptable range of pronunciation that we are looking for, because there is always going to be a range with language." When it comes to training a language model some sort of framework is needed in order to train the model, Allen said, so the first thing to do is establish what the range is for te reo Māori. The project is running for three years and Allen said they have that to establish te range of correct pronunciation, to develop the feedback tool, to test it with a group of users and to look at how it can be scaled from there. "We want to have as many people using the tool as possible, so we really want it to be available far and wide, exactly how we scale that we haven't quite worked that through yet, we're just going to be focussing on the research at this stage but then as we progress through the project we'll be looking at how we can scale it." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
26-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Tāmaki Makaurau candidate Peeni Henare says government playing 'silly games'
Tāmaki Makaurau candidate Peeni Henare campaigning at Ōtara Market. Photo: RNZ/Jessica Hopkins The Labour party says Aucklanders are tired of the government's "silly games". The party was drumming up support for their candidate in the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election in South Auckland on Saturday. Peeni Henare will contest the seat for Labour against Te Pāti Māori candidate, former broadcaster Oriini Kaipara, after the death of Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Moana Tarsh Kemp in June. Henare, who narrowly lost to Kemp at the last election, spent Saturday morning at the bustling Ōtara Market. He was joined by Labour leader Chris Hipkins and other party members, including Georgie Dansey, who will enter parliament on Labour's party list if Henare is successful. Speaking on the government redesigning New Zealand's passport to place the English words above the te reo Māori text, Hipkins said he was opposed to the change. "It's a massive step backwards. We can be proud to have Aotearoa, New Zealand on our passports. It has been there for decades, and no one has complained about it." Henare said the government was not focusing on what mattered. "I'm a big advocate for te reo Māori. It's concerning that the government isn't focused on real issues hurting our people, the cost of living. It's absolute silly games... from this government." Henare said he got a clear vibe from South Aucklanders that people wanted a change in government. "The message was very clear as we walked around the Ōtara Market that people want to see the back of this government." Henare said the passing of Takutai Kemp was very sad. But he said that did not mean Labour should not contest the Tāmaki Makaurau seat. "Anybody who thinks a green seat in the chamber of Parliament is a free pass for anybody is absolute folly. "Should I be successful at this by-election, our tuahine Georgia Dansey, a wahine Māori, will be coming into Parliament." He said Labour was seeking a clear mandate to represent Tāmaki Makaurau in the by-election and the 2026 elections. A 2016 and a 2023 New Zealand passport. The older passport features the English words first - a design the government says it will change back to with new passports from 2027. Photo: Natalie Akoorie Chris Hipkins said they would be vigourously campaigning for Henare over the next few weeks. Those on the Māori roll will vote in the Tāmaki Makauru by-election is on 6 September, 2025. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
25-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Te Pāti Māori, Greens outraged at 'marginalising' passport changes
Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii Te Pāti Māori says the government's changes to passports are an attempt to whitewash the national identity. The government confirmed on Friday New Zealand's passport is being redesigned to place the English words above the te reo Māori text. The new look won't start being rolled out until the end of 2027. Since 2021, passports have had "Uruwhenua Aotearoa" printed in silver directly above New Zealand Passport. Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden said the positioning of text on passports will change to reflect the government's commitment to using English first. She said the redesign - which would be unveiled later this year - was being done as part of a scheduled security upgrade, ensuring no additional cost to passport-holders. Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the change diminishes the visibility of tangata whenua. "Our passport is not just a travel document, it's a statement of who we are as a nation. So, the stripping down of te reo Māori, or marginalising our indigenous identity, reflects this government's sad obsession with erasing Te Tiriti o Waitangi and dragging us back to a monocultural past," she said. Ngarewa-Packer said the move undermined Aotearoa's reputation as a leading nation in recognising indigenous rights. "Restoring our reo took a long time. I mean imagine doing this in Ireland, imagine doing this to the Welsh. This was hard fought for. It's not re-ordering of words, the reformatting is deliberately done to undermine the mana [and] to sideline us tangata whenua." Benjamin Doyle Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Green Party MP Benjamin Doyle said the move is not what New Zealanders need from the government. "We are seeing day by day, the rights and dignities of minority communities being stripped away while they leave the majority of New Zealanders suffering under the government's current decisions," Doyle said. "This is not a positive vision for Aotearoa, this is not a positive step towards unifying kotahitanga and it's not benefiting anyone. Really, its just dog-whistling politics. It's the tail wagging the dog." The ACT Party celebrated van Velden's move on social media, saying the change would "restore English before te reo Māori - without costing taxpayers". The change comes as part of a deliberate push by the coalition to give English primacy over te reo Māori in official communications. New Zealand First's coalition agreement with National stipulates that public service departments have their primary name in English and be required to communicate "primarily in English" except for entities specifically related to Māori. It also includes an as-yet-unfulfilled commitment to make English an official language of New Zealand.
