By the 1950s and 1960s large numbers of Māori were moving into public secondary schools. General access to secondary education for Māori had at last become a reality (Jefferies, 1997). This period of time is important to this study because it was during the 1950s that three participants began primary school, followed by five more participants during the 1960s.
In 1960, the Report on the Department of Māori Affairs, more commonly known as the Hunn report mapped out the position of Māori in a range of areas including: Education, Employment, Health, Crime, Welfare, Housing and Land issues. This report was significant because it was the first empirical research to illustrate the “extent of Māori disadvantage on a number of
indices” (Bishop & Glynn, 1999, p.37). There was a noticeable shift in attitude in this report. The idea that Māori were intellectually inferior was supplanted by the notion that Māori were “...quite capable of absorbing education at all levels. The distribution of intelligence is the same among Māori as among Europeans” (Hunn, 1960, p.23). The report highlighted education as an area of importance because it was believed that “education will, in the long run, do most for the cause of Māori advancement” (Hunn, 1960, p.20).
In terms of Māori performance in education, the report showed that: the majority of Māori children at the primary level were enrolled in education board schools (71%); a very small proportion of Māori continued their schooling to the sixth form level; and Māori representation at University was “only about one – eighth of what it should be” (Hunn, 1960, p.25). There were no data available on the number of Māori who passed School Certificate and University Entrance examinations as Māori statistics were not collated as a separate category at that time. The report claimed that the number of Māori pursuing higher education was dwindling, and the main cause was attributed to a lack of interest in post primary and university education and parental apathy (Hunn, 1960). The report suggested that changing parental attitudes towards education would be a key task in the future:
To persuade the Māoris [Māori] to accept equality of education at university level is clearly one of the main tasks for the future. Otherwise the Māori people debar themselves of their own volition, from entry to many walks of life that are both satisfying to the individual and honorific to the race (Hunn, 1960, p.25).
The report made a number of recommendations including that a Foundation for Māori Education be established and that Māori schools be integrated into the public schooling system. The latter recommendation had been proposed five years earlier by the National Committee on Māori Education (1955). Although the report focused mainly on academic advancement, a practical
emphasis was not lost altogether, the report did suggest “a proper survey would doubtless show ample scope for a calculated policy of steering specially selected Māori children into technical schools to equip them better for conditions in the skilled labour market” (p.26). The power to decide who would be “specially selected” was once again left to Department of Education officials.
In setting a new direction for educational policy, the Hunn Report (1960) recommended that New Zealand move from the policy of ‘assimilation’ to a new policy of ‘integration’. Integration would involve combining Māori and Pākeha elements whilst still maintaining a distinctive Māori culture (Hunn, 1960). This was seen as the best way to bring the nation together and deal with the question of race relations. In practice, the policy did very little other than maintain the status quo. Integration was in many respects assimilation in another guise, minority rights were subsumed by those of the dominant majority (Bishop & Glynn, 1999; Metge, 1990).
The Report of the Commission on Education in New Zealand, or Currie Commission Report was published two years later in 1962. The Currie report re-emphasised many of the findings and recommendations made by the earlier Hunn report. It recommended that Māori schools be transferred to Education Board control. However it asserted that this action be completed within a ten year time frame. It also highlighted the disparities between Māori and Non-Māori by demonstrating that: very few Māori continued their education beyond the 15 year compulsory leaving age; Māori children left school earlier and with fewer qualifications than their Non-Māori peers; and a large proportion of Māori were employed in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations (Currie, 1962). There is a strong connection between these last two facts. Low achievement at school often restricts job opportunities. For Māori in particular, high rates of educational underachievement have meant that there has been a disproportionate amount of Māori employed in unskilled
and semi-skilled occupations. During the 1950s and 1960s there were plenty of job opportunities in these areas. However, as will be demonstrated later in the chapter, this situation would present major problems for Māori during the 1970s and 1980s. Low rates of achievement at school also meant that access to higher education was out of reach for many Māori.
Both the Hunn (1960) and the Currie Commission (1962) reports took a deficit view when explaining the educational disparity between Māori and Non- Māori. Māori children were failing to achieve at school because they were ‘culturally deprived.’ In other words, there was not enough emphasis on formal education in the home. The Currie (1962) report claimed that “... too many [Māori] live in large families in inadequately sized and even primitive homes, lacking privacy, quiet and even light for study: too often there is a dearth of books, pictures, educative material generally, to stimulate the growing child” (Currie,1962, p.48). ‘Cultural deficit’ or ‘cultural deprivation’ theories were influential in the international context as well as here in New Zealand during this time (Metge, 1990, p.6). Neither of these reports took into consideration the cumulative effects of a practical curriculum and massive language loss. By the end of the decade cultural deficit theories were being heavily critiqued in New Zealand as in other parts of the world. Māori children were starting to be seen as culturally different rather than culturally deprived (Jones, Marshall, Matthews, Smith & Smith, 1995).
In 1969, the Māori Schools (formerly known as the Native Schools) system was finally disestablished (Barrington & Beaglehole, 1974; Openshaw et al., 1993; Simon, 1998). There was now, only one education system in New Zealand and Māori had become fully integrated into this mainstream schooling environment.