Books Report of the Commission on Education in N.Z. reviewed by John Booth In 1960 the government set up a Commission of Enquiry to look into all aspects of education in New Zealand. After hearing the views of many different people and seeing for themselves what was being done in schools all over the country, the Commission has brought out a massive and most valuable report of over eight hundred pages. Although the Department of Education acknowledges that there are many problems facing the 70,000 Maori children in New Zealand's schools, the Commission was not asked specifically to examine Maori education. Everywhere it looked, however, it saw that overhead above the ordinary difficulties facing every child and every school, Maori children and Maori schools had special difficulties that could only be overcome by making special provision for extra help, just as is done for other children who are handicapped in some way. Some Maoris might be worried by the thought that more money should be spent on their children than on most Pakeha children. They do not want any special privileges. This, however, is not how the educational authorities look at the situation because it is their job to give equal opportunity to every child, no matter where he comes from, and to help him climb as high as he can up the hill of education. Some groups are going to cost more to educate than others but, whatever the cost, the country cannot afford to have the talents of a large section of the population going to waste.

Ways to Help Realising the importance of Maori education, the Commission devotes a whole chapter to it in this Report. It makes it clear that there is a very great effort needed now by all concerned with the education of our Maori children. There are so many of them who have the ability to do well at school but who, for a variety of reasons, are not successful. There are so many who, because they have not been able to get the most out of their education, must always stay in jobs that make use of only half their intelligence. The Commission makes twenty-three recommendations in connection with Maori education, all of which, it thinks, will help your children in one way or another. While the report deals with the problems of teaching Maori, of providing scholarships big enough to meet the cost of boarding-schools, of meeting the needs of the pre-school child, most attention will probably be focused on the suggestion that the Department of Education should aim at handing over all Maori schools to Education Board control within the next ten years. At first sight this looks as if it will be a most unpopular suggestion. We all know how proud many settlements are of their Maori schools and how strongly they have opposed this change in the past. What the report proposes, however, is going to give far more than it takes away and deserves careful thought on the part of all Maori parents. At the present time only one-child of the Maori children at primary schools attend the Maori schools which are administered by the Department of Education. The other two-thirds attend schools run by Education Boards, even though some of them have only Maori children on their rolls. The Commission proposes that all schools with more than a certain proportion of Maori children should be classed as ‘Maori Service’ schools, being given special assistance on a higher scale than Maori schools receive at present. These Maori Service schools would have extra money for library books, extra teachers to help children overcome reading difficulties and other specialists to guide the pupils in their school work and to advise parents how to help their children. This would apply to secondary schools as well as to primary.

‘A Special Need’ Probably some people will say that Maoris should be content with the same education that is available to everyone else. This is a shallow argument that supposes all children to be the same. What the schools try to do is to provide the very best education for all children, whether they are bright, dull or only average, whether they are blind, in hospital or perfectly healthy, whether they are Islanders, Pakehas or Maoris. The Commission says this, ‘that Maori education must become an area of special need, requiring special measures and, inevitably, increased expenditure. It (the Commission) believes that the Maori has as good a right to claim this from our community as have any other groups where children are handicapped through no fault of their own….’ The recognition of this special need is a good starting point. Not everyone will agree with the Commission's next step, the replacement of Maori schools under the Education Department with Maori Service schools under the Boards. In the writer's view, however, the gains should be far greater than the losses and should result in a far better educational deal for Maori children than they get at present.