How to fix one of the world’s least equal education systems?

ANALYSIS: The government is taking steps to address educational inequalities, but until Aotearoa lifts its racist legacy structures, Māori learners will be left behind in the mainstream.

New Zealand is used to being on the ‘best’ lists in the world. But when it comes to equality, we continue to score poorly. This is especially true in education.

In 2018, New Zealand was exposed as one of the least equitable education systems in the world.

The last time the OECD’s Pisa scorecard and Unicef’s Innocenti report were released, Aotearoa was ranked 33rd out of 38 countries.

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Subsequent local research found that racism and a colonial education system are at the heart of the huge divide between the students who do well and those who fall off the educational cliff.

It found that Māori students fell significantly behind on every measure of educational achievement, including high school retention rates, school dropouts reaching NCEA Level 2, and the percentage of young people in education, employment, or training.

In 2021, only 58% of Maori students achieved NCEA Level 1, which was 16 percentage points lower than European students.

Again, this gap was highlighted in recently released Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) data, which showed that the Maori were most likely to violate their right to education.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s Education Matters to Me report found that many young people experienced racism in school because they said they were treated unequally because of their culture.

Although much attention has been paid to the consequences of having a low socioeconomic background, research in New Zealand (and also in the United States on African-American students) has shown that poverty cannot fully explain the gap between Maori and Pākehā. .

The government has recognized the need to address these issues and is pumping money into Maori education, but from a low base. In this year’s budget, approximately $200 million went to a series of Māori education initiatives.

Meanwhile, the introduction of the Equity Index to replace the decile system is being billed as a way to improve equal opportunity through a more nuanced allocation of resources to schools, teachers and students.

But there is still more work to be done.

Eruera Tarena (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui), Kawhakatere (Executive Director) of Tokona te Raki: Māori Future Makers, says that Aotearoa cannot promote justice without recognizing and addressing the root cause of inequality: systemic racism.

Everyone is good at describing the problem and can list negative Māori statistics, but there’s a degree of “problem blindness” to what caused these results, he says.

“Part of the problem is that we focus on individuals, which often leads us to blame someone for being poor or ‘not working hard enough’, rather than lifting our gaze to look upstream to see the see barriers holding them back.”

Historically, racism and assimilation were official government policies, based on the idea that Māori were less. These ideas are like code used to program a computer system and influence the way people see things. And they have continued to inform education, health and justice policies and practices, he says.

“Even if their original intent has been forgotten, racism is so embedded in many policies and practices that they are often invisible to many.”

Pressing Māori into a “one size fits all” system doesn’t work, Tarena says.

While Māori learners are less likely to achieve high levels of educational success in the mainstream system, data shows that children in Māori medium or kaupapa Māori education are more likely to succeed.

Those who attend Maori immersion schools read better and perform better at the Commission, at university or at work.

Tarena says kura kaupapa Māori produces better results because they are designed for that.

Māori medium education does not share the same racial bias as it is designed to favor Māori ways of thinking, knowing, doing and being, which emphasize cultural values, aspirations and strengths.

Currently, about 10% of Māori children – 20,000 – are in kura kaupapa. Meanwhile, data from the Ministry of Education shows that in 2021, 2,403 teachers received a Māori allowance for immersion education.

The government has set itself an ambitious target to triple the number of students in Māori secondary education by 2040. But to reach that figure of 60,000, the country will need about 250 additional kura, 3,500 more fluent Māori-speaking teachers, more learning support, general resources and physical school infrastructure.

Meanwhile, there is a claim before the Waitangi Tribunal, calling for an autonomous Māori education authority – similar to the one in response to the inequalities in the health system.

Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis (Ngāpuhi) says people tend to confuse and complicate Te Tiriti or Waitangi.

Simply put, it is article one, kāwanatanga, and article two, rangatiratanga, working together to achieve article three: equality.

“That’s what Māori want. We just want to be able to perform as well as everyone else in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation.”

He declined to comment on the claim before the tribunal, except to say that a separate authority should benefit all Māori.

He says the starting point is to ensure equitable resources.

“If we do that right, we’ll see the improvement in educational performance.”

The government has spent more than $700 million on Māori education since taking office, but Davis acknowledges there is still some catching up to do.

It is working to normalize the use of te reo in mainstream education through the Te Ahu o te Reo Māori program, aimed at lifting te reo competence across the board.

Meanwhile, Te Hurihanganui has been developed as a way to tackle racism and unconscious bias in mainstream classrooms. The program aims to deliver a quality education that reflects culture and identity, and a strong involvement of whānau and the wider community.