New schools join Te Kotahitanga programme

TEAM WORK: The University of Waikato’s Te Kotahitanga team. Seventeen new schools have now joined the programme.

Seventeen schools have joined the innovative Te Kotahitanga programme devised and run by the University of Waikato.

The programme, which began in 2001, is funded by the Ministry of Education to address Māori achievement in secondary schools.

This year the Government announced $11 million of funding over four years to roll out the programme to another 17 schools, taking the number of schools involved to 50 in 2010 in an area from Kaitaia to Gisborne, Napier and Wairoa. A total of 42,000 students across those areas will be involved, including nearly 20,000 Māori students.

Te Kotahitanga (which means unity of purpose) promotes the understanding that Māori students learn better when they have strong learning relationships with their teachers. It changes how teachers teach and challenges the belief that a student’s circumstances can limit their achievements at school. Te Kotahitanga also helps schools to develop school-wide structures that allow Māori to enjoy education success as Māori.

School principals at the 17 schools have already attended an induction hui in Tauranga in October, and the first training for facilitators took place in November.

Professor of Māori Education at Waikato University and director of the project, Russell Bishop, says the university runs professional development for facilitation teams “or change agents” in the schools, supporting them to coach their staff to alter their approach to teaching. It’s an intensive means of providing ongoing support for teachers in their classrooms,” he says.

Each school has a lead facilitator. “Having a lead facilitator in the school is like a school having a fulltime professional development person,” Prof Bishop says. “It is a very positive development in New Zealand education that funding has been allocated to support in-school professional development to this extent.”

He says good results are already emerging from the existing schools. “The literature we’ve drawn on shows that it takes seven to 10 years for any change to be embedded,” he says. “A number of schools have been in the programme since 2003 and are reporting that disparities between Māori and non-Māori students in some subject areas are virtually gone.”

Other schools involved in the initial phases report improvements in measurable factors, such as pass rates for NCEA, student retention, attendance and positive student schooling experiences. Prof Bishop says although the programme aims to improve the performance of Māori students through changing the ways of teaching, all students are benefiting.

Waikato University’s School of Education Dean, Professor Alister Jones, says the project has become a flagship in Māori education. “For years we have heard about the failure of our education system to lift Māori students’ achievements,” he says. “Educational reform, which is what Te Kotahitanga is, does not happen by accident - it is complex and time-consuming. But this programme is making a difference to New Zealand.”

The new schools are: Kaitaia College; Kamo High School; Tikipunga High School; Fairfield College; Forest View High School; Tongariro School; Rotorua Boys’ High School; Rotorua Lakes High School; Taupo-nui-a-Tia College; Flaxmere College, Hastings Boys’ High School, Napier Boys’ High School; William Colenso College; Gisborne Boys’ High School, Gisborne Girls’ High School; Lytton High School; Wairoa College.