Education Amendment Bill
te-pati-maori
Thu Jul 01 2010 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Education Amendment Bill
Thursday, 1 July 2010, 10:56 am
Speech: The Maori Party
Education Amendment Bill (no 2)
Hone Harawira, MP for Te Tai Tokerau
Wednesday 30 June 2010; 5pm
Kia ora tatou katoa e te whare.
The end of the Government’s financial year sits uncomfortably close to te Matariki. It is the dawning of the Maori new year; a time to reflect on the past and to look to the future.
The essence of this bill on education is that it is as critical to our past and essential to our future as anything else that might arise over the next century.
Just over a hundred years ago, at the Maori Congress in 1908, Hone Heke Ngapua, the MP from Tai Tokerau, argued for the teaching of Maori in native schools and for Maori to be recognised as a subject for University Entrance.
Eighty years later, the Matawaia Declaration called for the establishment of a fully autonomous and independent Maori education authority to secure Maori control over Maori philosophies and educational practices.
Just nine years ago, Tuwharetoa chief, Tumu te Heuheu called a Hui Taumata Matauranga, to bring together proposals for a separate tino rangatiratanga Maori education authority; a new Maori Education Act and a Minister of Maori Education.
[Trevor Mallard: No he didn’t. That’s just not true. He rejected it. Pita Sharples put it up and the chief said no. I was there.]
Central to all these themes is our desire to give our kids a good start in life.
Mr Mallard should open his ears. At no time did I say he approved it; I just said it was to bring together proposals. If Mr Mallard would just keep his mouth shut and his ears open he might here and he might understand.
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We want to give them a range of options for their future within an environment where schools engage with whanau to develop models of success and innovation.
In order to ensure that Maori needs are genuinely met, we want to see more Maori language teachers in all schools as well.
So this bill raised a few hopes given that it targets early childhood, secondary and tertiary programmes, private schools and international students.
But the reality is that every year, the Nga Haeata Matauranga annual report on Maori Education says that most schools are struggling to meet the educational needs of Maori students.
The first proposal in this bill is about early childhood education. That is ok because 76 percent of all Maori kids are in mainstream early education centres.
A few weeks back the Education Review office report, Success for Maori children in early childhood services noted that only a third of services were assisting Maori children to achieve. In other words, two thirds simply did not have effective processes in place to help Maori kids grow or even identify whether what they were doing for Maori kids was any good.
ENDS
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