The main reason for Maori achievement is that their education is seen as a total process: from infant schooling through to adult education. In Australia we have sunk all our eggs into the primary basket and avoided, or evaded, the education of the whole community. Assimilation, or equality is for the under 30s only, runs one popular claim. The N.Z. play centre movement is a magnificent concept and one which works in practice. Its essence is that the play centres (pre-school centres) are operated entirely by the mothers. The pre-school officer of the Maori Education Foundation assists Maori communities to become aware of their value, then to set up and run such centres themselves. As many mothers as possible are trained (one mother in six, of those involved in play centres, by 1967). Three certificates are involved: one at the end of six months (attainable on a verbal basis), one at the end of a year and the third at the end of two years. There are training manuals of an easily understandable kind for mother-supervisors. Of the 423 play centres now operating, 228 have a part or full Maori roll. Maori communities have thus come alive and have turned their attention to other community needs—supervised homework classes, adult education, arts and crafts—using simple buildings and equipment made or adapted by themselves. These combined activities as an extension of play centres are called family education centres. The aims of play centres are being achieved: stimulating parents to take more active interest in their children's education and the running of their communities, and increasing their children's social experience and knowledge of English—to equip them better for formal education. In contrast, we have about 2,164 Aboriginal children attending pre-school centres in Australia, that is, standard middle-class European-value-oriented centres. Balwyn kindergartens don't transplant on the edge of the Simpson desert nor do they bring with them any real parental involvement. The play centres, family education centres, and Maori schools, or schools with large Maori numbers, have recognised, or tried to recognise, one important value: group identification or group solidarity. That Maori children feel more secure in a Maori community environment, and where Maori is often (but not often enough) taught as a school subject, is accepted. There are no over—or undertones of segregation, and few cries of apartheid. The users of that wretched slogan ‘assimilation’ for ever see any notion of ‘separate’ as Pretoria-model discrimination. This is very much the case in Australia—to the point where some administrations won't keep separate statistics for Aborigines—thereby preventing the pinpointing of a particular problem. This is not done for sound educational reasons, but for sociopolitical ones. We maintain, unquestioningly, an education system in which one child in four attends a ‘separate’ school, separate for social, economic and religious reasons. Why scream at Maori or Aboriginal exercises in group identity? Linked with this group approach is the Maori Affairs Department's philosophy on post-school training. Their aim is to spread Maoris through all occupational strata and thus prevent an unskilled Maori proletariat. In 1961 the census showed 90 per cent of Maoris in labouring, working, unskilled and semi-skilled occupations, as opposed to 69.7 per cent of the Pakehas; the figures were 10 per cent and 30.3 per cent for administrative, executive, professional and technical occupations. To achieve a better or an equal spread, the department provides incentive trade training courses in plumbing, carpentry, electrical wiring, panel-beating, motor mechanics, painting and plastering. By last year 829 boys had been taken in, of whom 557 had completed training and been placed with employers. To date, there are 1,072 registered Maori apprentices. The main features of this programme are: the selection of trainees is based on a first-class vocational guidance system; the special ‘pre-training’ — varying from 6 months to two years, the only part for which the department is responsible, is provided for Maoris only; the lads do practical work in teams, based on compatibility; the training includes additional courses in English, maths and ‘urban adjustment’; the pre-training is done by qualified staff of