Editor
Many principals who attended the 2015 conference in Wellington have said that the programme was truly outstanding from beginning to end. I would agree and would add that much of the success was due to the clever way the programme was constructed around the theme of seeing education through different lenses. The lenses could well have been renamed as day and night lenses given the deep dark and frightening messages some speakers delivered and the bright, optimistic messages that emanated from others, particularly some of our New Zealand researchers. NZPF President, Denise Torrey has covered the more sinister topic of privatising public education by stealth (p. 3), but in an act of unrestrained optimism, I choose to be inspired by Professor Angus MacFarlane. MacFarlane presented a beautifully crafted picture of the history of education for Māori in New Zealand up to the modern day. It wasn’t a jolly story. It placed Māori firmly in the lower classes, disempowered and marginalised. He told us that educational expectations were set lower for Māori compared to Pakeha and these lower expectations would ensure Māori would remain located at the bottom end of society. This was not necessarily an overt process of deliberate discrimination, he explained, but rather happened as if it was the perfectly natural and normal way to be and how Māori would want it to be. This hegemonic force would prove viciously detrimental to prospects for Māori for many decades to come. At the same time, Māori were convinced that the way to advance in this new world was to learn English and Pakeha ways and keep Māori culture and language at home. Schools and education systems then were as he put it ‘culturally deprived’. More recently the lens has turned again on Māori only this time our expectations are different. We now want Māori to succeed at exactly the same rate as their Pakeha peers. Educators everywhere welcome this new emphasis. It’s just the small matter of undoing a century and a half of ingrained institutional racism and cultural deprivation that is the problem. MacFarlane is not deterred by the weight of this challenge and looks to the new wave of researchers coming through and establishing culturally relevant pedagogies. Many of them are researchers here in New Zealand and their work is internationally recognised. He is pleased with the progress especially with the introduction of the Māori education strategy Ka Hikitia, and the Tātaiako, cultural competencies for teachers of Māori learners. Implemented well, these documents are powerful agents of positive change for Māori learners. Other programmes too have
been developed by fellow researchers such as Russel Bishop’s Te Kotahitanga programme. This programme has been successfully implemented in secondary schools but Ministry funding has not been forthcoming to either maintain the programme in those schools nor extend it into the primary school sector. NZPF has also taken up the cultural challenge with colleagues leading mainstream schools. They want to provide culturally appropriate pedagogies but don’t know how. They want to implement the excellent ideas from Ka Hikitia and Tātaiako but don’t know how. NZPF’s Māori Achievement Collaboratives have been designed deliberately to provide a supportive environment within which Pākehā principals can confront their own beliefs and values and consider a different world view, a Māori world view. Facilitators are then able to share knowledge of Tikanga Māori and lead them through ways to transform the culture of their school, taking account of its context. The collaboratives are a major success and are transforming schools into truly bicultural entities all over the country. They are the means by which so many more Māori learners will feel that being Māori has value. Feeling valued is a critical prerequisite to forming meaningful relationships and in the case of Māori children, establishing that all important trust relationship with teachers and peers. These relationships are critical to Māori children feeling a sense of belonging to their school and thus being able to experience success in learning. Similarly, Pacific Island children in New Zealand struggle and are often located at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. But progress is being made. The Stoke School story in this issue (p. 26) demonstrates the importance first of connecting with the Pacific Island community, reaching out and listening and then acting on suggestions. It’s also about allowing initiatives to be led by the Pacific Island community so they feel empowered. It’s again about seeing the world through different lenses, understanding different world views and embracing them. Once that’s established working relationships can be formed and developed, as described in the story. Stoke School is one example of many schools in New Zealand that have reached deep into their communities and drawn the community in. Stoke already had a strong sense of biculturalism so reaching out to its Pacific Island community was a natural response to the growing Pacific Island population of the region. MacFarlane is confident that we can feel optimistic about the future of Māori and Pacific Island education in New Zealand and as the education results improve so also will future work prospects improve. I agree with him. All we need now is the political will to support the excellent work already well underway.