Railways share with kohanga

Tu Tangata, Issue 27, 1 December 1985, Page 19

Railways share with kohanga

Te Ngaio Kohanga Reo opened last month in Wellington through a unique partnership between the Maori Community and New Zealand Railways.

The majority of the Maori people in Ngaio are employed by Railways and it was this corporation that offered a Railways owned house for use as a kohanga reo.

Railways assistant general manager of Property, Mr Euan McQueen said the corporation was only too pleased to be involved in the life of its employees, especially when it contributed to the overall well-being of the community.

He said Railways had wanted to make sure the best possible house was offered for the kohanga and that the lease arrangement was agreeable to both parties.

Kohanga parents wanted an assurance that they would be able to eventually purchase the house and property, but Mr McQueen said the Railways' owned settlement was all on one title, and until subdivision agreeable to the Wellington City Council took place, it wasn’t possible.

However he said that all Railways residents in the community of two or three streets, would be given the first option to purchase their homes, before they were probably offered to the Housing Corporation.

That’s been good news to the Maori community of Ngaio because of the close ties the families have through their employment and living together.

The partnership with N.Z. Railways came at a crucial time for the Ngaio Kohanga Reo, as they had wanted to move from their spare classroom at the local Ngaio Primary School. There was little liaison between the kohanga and the school despite many initiatives by the Maori community and support from pakeha parents.

Tu Tangata's Editor, Philip Whaanga has three children at the school and two at the kohanga reo. He says an overnight hui was called in the school hall last year to gather support for a much larger maori content in the curriculum of the school. This was acknowledged as being necessary but the teaching staff felt inadequate in meeting this challenge.

He says a junior school teacher volunteered to work with her fellow teachers in increasing this maori perspective, but received little support.

Even a culture club running outside school hours and organised by some of the Maori community failed to make a dent in the monocultural bias of the school staff.

Unfortunately he says, a maori perspective was not seen as relevant as remedial reading or other subjects and

the Maori parents soon got hoha with banging their heads against the school wall. So to did the maori resource teacher who left to join her husband at a school closer to her home taking with her the remnants of a ‘taha maori’ programme.

“Even the push by the Maori community to establish the kohanga reo in a spare classroom met with much feetdragging from the school and the Wellington Education Board. Perhaps it's not surprising that the kohanga received little support while it was at the school, apart from a request from the principal that the kohanga reo kaiako, Bobbie Te Whare, also take time out to tutor in the school, with no payment.”

With the establishment of the Ngaio Kohanga Reo, the Maori parents are now looking at what happens after their children go the local Ngaio Primary.

They could take courage from one Maori teacher who appeared before the Waitangi Tribunal in October telling of the fight Masterton parents have had to get a bilingual class at their school.

Mike Hollings said it took a threatened boycott by some parents before the Wellington Education Board and some school inspectors took their take seriously.

And then he said the handful of new maori teaching positions and language assistants announced in this year's Labour Government budget are totally inadequate to staff the many bilingual classes necessary to cater for the four hundred kohanga reo around the country.