Māori, Education of

The major challenges facing education in New Zealand today are the continuing social, economic, and political disparities within the nation, primarily between the descendants of the European colonizers (Pakeha) and the Indigenous Māori people. Māori have higher levels of unemployment, are more likely to be employed in low-paying jobs, and to have much higher levels of incarceration, mental and physical illness, and poverty than do the rest of the population. They are also generally underrepresented in the positive social and economic indicators of the society. These disparities are also reflected at all levels of the education system. Anna María Villegas and Tamara Lucas identify a similar pattern in the United States where there is a significant achievement gap between low-income ethnic minority students and their mainstream peers who are White, middle class, and English speaking. In Europe, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the migration of people from previous colonies, with their different age structures and birthrates, has created a similar pattern of diversity and disparity among the school-age population, where now sizable groups of ethnic and religious minorities are evident in most towns and cities.

In comparison to majority-culture students (in New Zealand these students are primarily of European descent), the overall academic achievement levels of Māori students are low; their rate of suspension from school is three times higher; they are overrepresented in special education programs for behavioral issues; enroll in preschool programs in lower proportions than other groups; tend to be overrepresented in low-stream education classes; are more likely than other students to be found in vocational curriculum streams; leave school earlier with less formal qualifications; and enroll in tertiary education in lower proportions. For example, in 2009, 23% of Māori boys and 35% of Māori girls achieved university entrance, compared to 47% and 60%, respectively, for their non-Māori counterparts. In 2010, Māori students were twice as likely to leave school at the age of 15 than Pakeha students. In 2009, only 28% of Māori boys and 41% of Māori girls left school with a level 3 (usually the final year of secondary schooling) qualification or above, compared to 49% and 65%, respectively, of their non-Māori counterparts. Also in 2009, the retention rate to age 17 was 45.8% for Māori, compared to 72.2% of non-Māori. The Māori suspension rate is 3.6 times higher than that of Pakeha, and while 89.4% of Māori new entrants had attended preschool programs in 2010, 98.1% of Pakeha/European new entrants had done so.

As with other indigenous peoples in the world who have suffered the impact of colonialism, these disparities reflect major and ongoing power imbalances that have resulted in significant culture and language loss among Māori people, particularly over the past century. This loss of culture and language and the ethnic revitalization that has developed from within Māori culture itself in response are the major focuses of this entry. Its purpose is to demonstrate how theorizing and practice that has grown from within Māori epistemologies has [Page 1436]been applied in both Māori-medium and English-medium public schooling.

...