Appendix: Our previous recommendations on Māori education

Summary of our Education for Māori reports.

Recommendations from Education for Māori: Implementing Ka Hikitia – Managing for Success (2013)

In our view, tangible improvements in the success of Māori students will require concerted and collaborative work to put Ka Hikitia into effect in the day-to-day work of the entire education system.

The Ministry of Education, as the lead agency in education, needs to take care not to rush or under-resource the push for Ka Hikitia. It is particularly important that the next "refreshed" phase of Ka Hikitia avoids repeating the mistakes made earlier.

Some of our recommendations are specifically for the Ministry of Education. Some are for the education agencies referred to in this report (the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the Tertiary Education Commission, and the Teachers Council [now the Education Council]) and also Te Kura (the Correspondence School) and Careers New Zealand. Others are for all public entities involved in education, including schools.

We would expect to see progress on each recommendation by 2015, in the middle of our five-year audit programme.

Our recommendations for the Ministry of Education

  1. We recommend that the Ministry of Education apply what it learned from the introduction of Ka Hikitia to ensure that the next phase of implementation is effective, including:
    • thoughtful planning and engagement with those expected to deliver the next phase of Ka Hikitia, with adequate resourcing;
    • clear leadership and management responsibilities for embedding Ka Hikitia into day-to-day business in the Ministry and throughout education agencies; and
    • improved accountability and reporting mechanisms.
  2. We recommend that the Ministry of Education identify and target resources to support the activities that have been the most effective in putting Ka Hikitia into effect.

Our recommendations for education agencies

  1. We recommend that all education agencies better co-ordinate efforts to support improvements in schools, including:
    • building understanding of, commitment to, and action on the aims of Ka Hikitia in schools; and
    • schools setting up and sharing teaching practices that are effective in improving Māori students' educational success.
  2. We recommend that:
    • the New Zealand Teachers Council use its approval mechanisms for initial teacher education qualifications and programmes and the Tertiary Education Commission use its purchasing of these qualifications and programmes to ensure that student teachers and newly qualified teachers have the right skills to engage effectively with Māori students; and
    • the New Zealand Teachers Council use its influence and approval mechanisms to ensure that monitoring and appraisal processes for teacher registration lead to improved teaching practices and engagement with Māori students and their whānau.

Our recommendation for all public entities involved in education

  1. We recommend that all public entities involved in the delivery of education engage and consult Māori students, in ways that are respectful and safe for the students, to ensure that the experiences and opinions of Māori students contribute to improving the education they receive.

Recommendations from Education for Māori: Using information to improve Māori educational success (2016)

  1. We recommend that the Ministry of Education work with schools to establish a framework for collecting cultural information (for example, a student's ties with their iwi) and other information (for example, a student's goals and aspirations) about Māori enjoying educational success as Māori.
  2. We recommend that the Ministry of Education help those schools that do not have enough understanding about what Māori enjoying educational success as Māori means, by providing better guidance and information that they can use to measure Māori enjoying educational success as Māori.
  3. We recommend that the Ministry of Education use currently available information to investigate the variation in Māori educational achievement of similar schools in similar circumstances and help the lower-performing schools to do better.
  4. We recommend that the Ministry of Education work with education agencies and schools to ensure that there is effective leadership and common understanding of the purpose and use of information to improve outcomes for Māori students. This includes:
    • ensuring that school charters have targets for Māori achievement, where appropriate;
    • having a planned approach to improve the quality and use of information;
    • taking stock of information the education sector has and how it is used; and
    • encouraging the education sector to work together to ensure that staff have the capability to use information effectively.
  5. We recommend that the Ministry of Education improve practices to collect, analyse, use, and share information about Māori educational achievement. Priority should be given to:
    • sharing effective collection and analysis practices throughout the education system to improve Māori student achievement;
    • sharing practices so that schools use information and enquiry effectively to improve Māori student achievement;
    • improving the way schools collect student ethnicity data, which should include updating the Ministry of Education's ethnicity data collection guidance and examples; and
    • improving the availability of important and relevant cost information to inform decisions about investing in initiatives to improve Māori student achievement.