School for Maoris a ‘bitter experience’

Press, 14 April 1984, Page 9

School for Maoris a ‘bitter experience’

PA Wellington Secondary school is a bitter and useless experience for young Maoris, secondary teachers were told yesterday. An Otara teacher and the secretary of the Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality, Mr lan Mitchell, said that radical reforms to the education system were needed to help retrieve the “social disaster” of the high failure rate of Maoris. He was giving a paper at the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association hui on Maori

education at Huntly. The curriculum and assessment procedures in secondary schools were racist in effect, if not intention, Mr Mitchell said. Teachers had been timid too long and changes were now necessary. “The result of this timidity has been the alienation and disabling of enormous numbers of bright able young Maoris. We have talked too long, and achieved nothing.” Mr Mitchell called for tha abolition of the School Certificate examination and the

banning of standardised testing in schools. The present assessment system was destructive, based on “white male power structure,” he said. The Hawke’s Bay College senior mistress, Ms Rangi Tipene-Leach, said that Maori parents had no choice but to send their children into the education system to fail. The 1982 statistics showed that 69 per cent of Maori School Certificate candidates had failed. Until those who developed the curriculum believed Maoris had as much right to their cultural needs as pakehas, very little would be achieved, she said. “Schools assess for academic reasons and for convenience, not for the benefit of the child. If assessment is to be valid it must look at the whole child, not just one aspect of the child,” she said.