We rise – we fall

Tu Tangata, Issue 18, 1 June 1984, Page 10

We rise - we fall

Participants in the maori education conference at Ngaruawahia recently have been given two views of the achievements of maori students one depressing, the other optimistic. Both views were based on official statistics. In a key note address, Director-General of Education Bill Renwick produced statistics to show that maori students were performing much better now than 20 years ago, although he acknowledged areas of continuing concern. But in a discussion paper studied by conference-goers, Hillary College, Otara, teacher lan Mitchell also produced statistics that to him were “horrifying” and a “record of abysmal failure”. The following two articles look at the two points of view...

t was “most fortunate” that public discussions of the achievements of maori students concentrated so much on those who were failing, according to Director-General of Education Bill Renwick. In a keynote address to the Maori education conference at Ngaruawahia’s Turangawaewae marae in March, Mr Renwick acknowledged there were “far too many” failures.

“But there are also successes,” he told his audience.

He said that over the last 25 years, thousands of maori students had been encouraged to stay at school or go on to higher education.

Many were themselves now parents, able to guide their children through the education system better than previous generations of maori parents were.

“The best of these students are of outstanding quality,” Mr Renwick said, and cited the increased money set aside this year to enable more Ngarimu scholarships to be awarded. Among the applicants were prefects, house captains, duxes, speech contestants and sports team leaders.

Mr Renwick cited statistics which showed that maori secondary pupils were achieving considerably more now than 20 years go.

• The number of maori secondary pupils had jumped more than 300 per cent, from 9432 to 29,923 in 1982. Nonmaori students increased only 47 per cent.

• 77 per cent of maori school leavers came from the fifth, sixth and seventh forms in 1982, compared with only 42 per cent in 1962.

• 23.7 per cent of maori school leavers in 1982 had passed at least three subjects in School Certificate, compared with 11.5 per cent in 1968.

• 8.2 per cent left school with University Entrance or better in 1982, compared with 2.6 per cent in 1968.

Despite these achievements, Mr Renwick acknowledged that the problem

arose when comparisons were made between maori and pakeha pupils’ achievements.

“The gap between maori and pakeha is closing,” he said. “But it is taking longer to close than any of us expected.”

Figures which demonstrated this were that in 1968, 38 non-maori pupils left school with Sixth Form Certificate or better for every one maori student.

In 1982 the comparable ratio was 15 to one but on a pro rata population basis, the ratio should have been seven or eight to one.

Mr Renwick concluded that the education system was in much better shape to adequately cater for maori, needs than it had been in the past.

However, he said there were “good grounds for believing that the present inequalities will be further reduced by the end of this decade.”

Among important developments now taking place was that “for the first time in our history we are facing up to the prospect of including aspects of taha maori, not as an option or an afterthought, but as an essential part of school programmes for all New Zealanders,” Mr Renwick said.

t was “unthinkable” that the pakeha tolerate failure rates being experienced by maori pupils in School Certificate, according to Hillary College, Otara, teacher lan Mitchell. “If pakeha students got consistent failure rates of 82, 84 and 88 per cent in national examinations, the examination system itself would be very quickly blamed and either abolished or adapted to ensure pakeha success,” he wrote. Mr Mitchell made these claims in a discussion paper for the maori education development conference at Ngaruawahia’s Turangawaewae marae in March. Mr Mitchell cited statistics of pass and fail rates in School Certificate to back his claim that they were a “continuing record of abysmal failure”. • In 1980 64.1 per cent of maori pupils left school with no qualifications, compared with only 27.9 per cent of pakeha pupils.

• Only 9.3 per cent of maori pupils left school with University Entrance or better, compared with 34.3 per cent of pakeha.

•In 1982, 69 per cent of maori School Certificate candidates failed their papers, compared with 43 per cent of the pakeha. • 74 per cent of maori pupils who sat geography failed. • 73 per cent failed English. • 66 per cent failed science. • 64 per cent failed mathematics. • 84 per cent failed agriculture, 84 per cent failed home economics, 82 per cent failed engineering shopwork, and 88 per cent failed clothing. “There has been no overall or significant improvement in the past 10 years,” despite Education Department assurances to the contrary, Mr Mitchell claimed. “Nor is there likely to be an improvement, because all School Certificate is, is a good measurement of cultural difference. It sorts out very well those students who do not share middle-class pakeha cultural values and attitudes,” he wrote. He quoted from a magazine article which claimed that “hardly any of the exam papers even mention anything to do with maori or Polynesian people”. He said teachers and administrators would not admit there was a cultural bias in the examination that allowed children of pakeha culture to succeed, preferring instead to blame the victims for their failure.

Maori children were seen as lazy, linguistically disadvantaged, or poor learners “none of which, of course, is the least bit true”.

He said the education system was so pakeha-orientated that maori children were locked into a “failure cycle” from an early age, and their early “failures” became self-fulfilling prophecies.

These disadvantages showed themselves later in the fact that 40 per cent of 17-year-old maori boys had already come to the attention of the Children and Youth Persons Court, compared with 10 per cent of pakeha boys.

Mr Mitchell said if it was accepted the system was responsible for “a national crisis in maori education”, the answer was to heed the maori call: “Give us back our children. We’ll educate them.”

He cited what he called the “glowing success” story of the kohanga reo movement as evidence that the maori people could do it.

He also cited programmes in Auckland which had turned young maori school “failures” into successful, selfemployed entreprenuers as evidence that removal of the cultural bias in the education system would help young maori people achieve their full potential.