Over 1000 schools reaffirm their commitment to te Tiriti

By Jessie Moss and Bevan Holloway

School communities know that giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a relational process of doing, on the ground, every day.

A few weeks since Minister of Education, Erica Stanford decided that school boards no longer have to give effect Te Tiriti o Waitangi, hundreds of schools have reaffirmed their commitment to our constitutional document.

Together, 1007 of them have they’ve shown how out of touch Erica Stanford, really is.

The National Iwi Chairs Forum, supported by a coalition of national education organisations have called on Luxon and Stanford to immediately reverse the amendment which they say, “erases the Crown’s responsibility to honour te Tiriti in the one place every child in Aotearoa passes through: our education system”.

The iwi chairs summed up the hundreds of board declarations, when they said, “education is where Te Tiriti o Waitangi is made real for every generation”.

Te Tiriti’s wholesale removal was never consulted on, even though the Ministry of Education’s own departmental disclosure statement says it is “likely to have adverse effects on the Māori-Crown relationship”.

But in June this year Stanford did consult on demoting te Tiriti, to a lesser, “supporting” school board objective. This was met with outrage and widespread opposition.

NZEI Te Riu Roa president, Ripeka Lessels, states why school boards must have this responsibility: “We’ve got 160 years of evidence that they don’t teach it if it’s not in legislation”.

The Minister says she is “serious” about her commitment to te Tiriti, yet a conversation just weeks after its demotion in June, between Stanford and The Platform’s Sean Plunket, showed just how disingenuous that process was.

Stanford told Plunket, “I don’t want to be talking about the Treaty, I want to be talking about reading, writing, maths, achievement”.

Plunket proposed “to get all this Treaty stuff out of education, right?”. Stanford answered, “In one go”.

In one go, Stanford decided to remove the Tiriti objective completely. Instead of listening to communities and educators, Stanford has caved to lobbying from the likes of Hobson’s pledge.

Even more abhorrent, Stanford has now left schools vulnerable to anti-Māori groups like them, who can now lobby schools directly to not teach te reo Māori or who can complain loudly if they prioritise te Tiriti and mokopuna Māori in anyway. This is irresponsible in the extreme.

When you look at the reasons for including the te Tiriti objective in the first place, you see that Stanford cannot be serious about our tamariki, let alone Māori achievement.

In fact, she is going against all the evidence about how to ensure tamariki are included, safe, happy and affirmed in their identities at school: the foundations for learning and educational achievement.

The recent inclusion of the objective in 2020 was one of the outcomes of the Independent Taskforce Review of the Tomorrow’s Schools reform, which first established the system of school boards operating as Crown entities to govern schools.

Alongside that review, UNICEF ranked Aotearoa among the highest internationally for educational inequities. Adding to this the Children’s Commissioner, Mana Mokopuna, found that bullying, exclusion and racism were all increasing in our schools.

Giving effect to te Tiriti was therefore recognised in 2020 alongside school board objectives to give effect to the Human Rights Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

This change clarified school boards’ responsibilities to te Tiriti as Crown entities.

Kaiako Kārena Ngata explained that this transformative change was desperately needed because “inequities in educational outcomes lead to inequity in society, so the objectives are a really powerful lever to disrupt the poverty cycle and a lot of our systemic issues.”

Ngata reflected, “that Te Tiriti o Waitangi had equal status and mana to every other aspect of the conversation that the board prioritises.”

Stanford describes board members as volunteers who are confused by te Tiriti, but these community and whānau members are showing just how knowledgeable and committed to te Tiriti and tamariki they are.

School strategic plans are how a school board translates the high-level legislative direction into something that is meaningful for their community. This localising of the Act is desirable. It is how boards answer how they are going to make these directives real, in this community, for these children.

This section of the Act regulating how schools’ strategic plans are set is also changing in step with the removal of the te Tiriti objective.

So once boards reset their plans in accordance with the removal of te Tiriti, there will be a very different definition of what it means for a school to uphold its te Tiriti responsibilities. That is, by offering little more than the opportunity for academic achievement in a European context, with ‘the what’ and ‘how’ of that opportunity tightly defined and enforced by a highly prescribed curriculum.

But there is hope. Boards don’t need to change their plans under this Coalition Government at all.

The select committee report, prepared before these last-minute amendments recommended the date for the adoption of new school board strategic plans be moved out a year. Minister Stanford accepted this recommendation.

Did she understand what this means, or is she the confused one?

Boards now have until 2027 to operate under their existing te Tiriti-based strategic plans.

For a year longer than the coalition Government wanted, your school board has a clear legal pathway to keep te Tiriti in your school. A lot can change in a year.

About Aotearoa Educators Collective

Aotearoa Educators Collective is an umbrella collective created to support education thought leaders who share a common interest in promoting progressive ideals in schooling. The group includes academics, principals and teachers and is not aligned to any political party.

These leaders choose to contribute to mainstream public debate through mainstream media based on their research, their lived professional experience and their standing within the sector.

Bevan Holloway is an English teacher and member of the Aotearoa Educators Collective.

Jessie Moss is a registered teacher and the professional education adviser at NZEI Te Riu Roa. She has a background in primary school teaching and national curriculum resourcing.

Contact:

Name: Liam Rutherford
Title: Aotearoa Educators Collective Spokesperson
Phone Number: 0276304713