The Hidden Cost: Removing Te Tiriti Harms Every Child

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is an instruction manual for systemic excellence.

By Bevan Holloway

The impending removal of Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the Education and Training Act means its principles — Partnership, Participation, and Protection — are gone too. It is a mistake to view their removal as a niche policy debate or 'just a Māori issue’. This couldn't be further from the truth.

The fact is, these three principles are the foundational scaffolding for quality education for all children in Aotearoa New Zealand. Their removal doesn't simplify the system; it lowers the bar for every student, regardless of their background.

Every parent and every teacher must understand the cost of this decision: Māori kids will be harmed. Knowing that should be enough. But if it's not, every parent and every teacher should understand that in that harm we find the conditions for all other learners to be harmed too.

We Can’t Rely on ‘Goodwill’

First, let’s be clear: Te Tiriti, and its principles, are a legal mechanism that does not act to only protect Māori. Te Tiriti helps schools to ‘operationalise’, in a uniquely Aotearoa way, fundamental human rights in our education system, connecting us directly to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC). These rights mandate a minimum, non-negotiable standard of care, respect, and engagement. With the removal of Te Tiriti, we are shifting these essential rights from a legal requirement to the optional 'goodwill’ of the school or teacher.

Te Tiriti’s Three Principles Benefit All Students

The inclusion of Te Tiriti in the Act ensures that its principles are ‘alive’ in every school. That means a safer, and more engaging learning experience for Māori creates a safer and more engaging learning experience for all children because schools must adopt a stance that is cognisant of them and the rights children have. In other words, they become part of the culture of the place.

1. Partnership

The principle of Partnership legally demands schools build genuine, respectful relationships with Māori whānau. Crucially, this practice raises the standard of engagement with all parents and caregivers, whether Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika, or newcomers.

Embedded within Partnership is the ethos of care. Can there be learning without care?

When a school is legally required to work in partnership, the door is opened for all parents to have their voices heard and their context understood. When that requirement is removed, the voice of any parent — minority or marginalised or privileged — is easily dismissed.

2. Participation

The principle of Participation ensures that Māori voices — students, whānau, and iwi — are integral to decision-making, curriculum, and pedagogy.

Embedded within Participation is the ethos of listening. Can there be learning without listening?

A culture of participation empowers all students to have a say in their learning. Furthermore, including local Māori context and mātauranga Māori enriches the curriculum for every child, making learning more relevant, engaging, and deeply connected to the place they live. It changes the classroom from a place of passive reception to one of active engagement. It makes classrooms places that say, Your story matters.

3. Protection

The principle of Protection guarantees a Māori student’s right to be Māori and find success as Māori. Importantly, this is perhaps the most significant universal benefit.

Embedded within Protection is the ethos of understanding. Can there be learning without understanding?

To successfully protect the identity of one group, a school must, by necessity, become a structurally safe, anti-racist, and culturally responsive and sustaining environment. When it is, the standard of safety for every learner is raised: the child from an immigrant family, the child with a learning need, the maths-geek, the poet, the bookworm, the drama kid, the child facing bullying. A school that can’t guarantee safety for Māori can't guarantee it for anyone.

We Are About To Have A Curriculum Without A Conscience

The removal of these core principles is not happening in a vacuum. It is occurring alongside a massive overhaul of the curriculum and education sector.

The Erasure of Human Rights

Alongside removing Te Tiriti from Section 127, it has long been signaled that the draft amendments also propose removing the explicit obligation in Section 127 of the Act for school boards to uphold the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act.

Removing the explicit reference from the board’s core objectives signals to the education sector that the human rights of every student are no longer a priority for school governance.

A Shift to Prescriptive Detail

The curriculum is being re-written to be "knowledge-rich" and highly detailed, setting out clear, year-by-year content sequences for schools across the country. This level of detail, combined with mandates for specific teaching methods like structured literacy, reduces the professional autonomy of teachers to adapt lessons to their diverse students.

Prioritising the Colonial View

The changes have been criticised for diminishing the central place of Te Ao Māori, and instead introducing a Eurocentric prioritisation of knowledge. By making local context and cultural relevance secondary to detailed, abstract content, the curriculum risks failing to reflect the true, honest, history and reality of Aotearoa.

When a highly prescriptive curriculum (Content) is paired with the removal of mandatory principles (Conscience), the result is a system that instructs teachers on what to teach, while relieving them of the legal obligation to ensure how they teach is safe, inclusive, and equitable.

The removal of Te Tiriti means we now have a system primed for the violation of the rights Māori tamariki, and that should be enough for us to say no. Just in case it's not, the rights of every child are now at risk. There is no successful education system where the rights of children, any children, are left to chance.

Te Tiriti's principles acted as a crucial counterweight, a counterweight that became even more crucial with the proposal to remove reference to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act from Section 127.

To see why that matters, let’s imagine two schools side-by-side. Which classroom would you want your child in?

The Classroom WITH Te Tiriti

Learning is local, responsive, and relevant. Students are engaged in debates about their area’s history, incorporating both Western and Indigenous knowledge.

Safety is non-negotiable. The school’s policies on bullying and cultural safety are robust and actively enforced because they have a legal standard to meet.

Parent Voice is valued. Teachers have frameworks for building genuine partnership with every family, ensuring robust home-school connection.

The Classroom WITHOUT Te Tiriti

Learning is passive and textbook-driven. Content feels distant and irrelevant to many students’ lives. Success is defined in narrow terms.

Safety is left to chance. Incidents of micro-aggression or exclusion are often dismissed as 'tough luck' or 'not a big deal.' The standard drops for all minority students.

Parent Voice is only heard when there is a problem. Teachers rely on individual 'goodwill,' resulting in inconsistent and often non-existent engagement with diverse families.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not a policy of division. Te Tiriti o Waitangi is an instruction manual for systemic excellence.

Its principles are the structural shield that ensures quality education, safety, and relevance for all children. When we remove that shield, we aren't just letting down Māori students — and to be clear, this removal means we absolutely are — we are making every classroom shallower, less safe, and less accountable to every parent and every child in the country. The removal is a regression to a lower, unacceptable standard. It heralds the arrival of an impoverished education for every child in every classroom.

School Leaders

Your leadership is now the structural shield. Your responsibility is to ensure the space where the national curriculum meets your learners remains responsive. You must model and mandate the principles of Partnership, Participation, and Protection, even though they will no longer be legally required in the Act. Your school culture is the only thing standing between the new prescriptive curriculum and equitable outcomes for your most vulnerable learners.