La gestualidad del tronco y las extremidades:

HW and CR presented an iwi perspective on behalf of the TEA. Most of the presentation was delivered by HW and she introduced their backgrounds in the following way:

We both work for Tūhoe Education Authority, it’s an organisation that’s been set up by 13 schools, i roto i te rohe pōtae o Tūhoe [in the jurisdiction of Tūhoe iwi]. Both of us are ex-Principals pretty similar to a lot of you in this room but my principalship was overseas and [CR] of course was working in one of our local schools, I had the opportunity to work with a number of different ethnic groups in Sydney in adult migrant education and it taught me a lot so what I did

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was I brought a lot of that experience home. This presentation is about lived experience.

Established in 1999, TEA was three months into its Te Kauhua agreement at the time of the National Te Kauhua Hui. It was established by the 13 schools in Tūhoe to work on their behalf, and concurrently, TEA is recognised by the iwi as their educational arm. The schools are spread across three geographical rohe, and the TEA board includes representatives from each school. Ninety nine per cent of students enrolled in Tūhoe schools are Māori, with 90 per cent of having whakapapa to Ngāi Tūhoe.

Figure 4.1: Location of Tūhoe Schools and Kohanga Reo (ECE Māori Language Nests) with Whom TEA Works

Te Urewera National Park is the central connecting feature of the schools in Tūhoe. Eleven are located within Te Urewera National Park itself. HW explained that:

for us it’s home it’s not a park it’s actually home and this is where our knowledge is created through Te Urewera through the mountains, through the rivers, through the land itself, what emanates from the land that is us our whole knowledge base comes from this area.

When TEA entered into its partnership with the Ministry of Education in 2000, there were many issues and interventions across the 13 schools. TEA was considered a way of providing Tūhoe-centric solutions to those concerns:

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We were seen as a group that would go in and look after all the issues or the intervention issues that the Ministry couldn’t handle at the time and being new on the block back in 1999 we thought oh yup we can try that what we decided as an iwi group was ok no one else is going to be able to solve our issues for us except ourselves and so alongside the schools we looked at possible solutions. (HW)

Soon after TEA began its work, it identified that Tūhoe-specific knowledge and ways of doing things were missing from school settings and their curricula:

We had a look and we thought what is wrong with this model and we thought the iwi kaupapa is missing now that was back in 2000 and so our communities, our teachers, when I say our communities I’m talking about our kaumatua [elders] our kui, some of our parents who are boards of trustees our teachers decided let’s have a look at developing an iwi strategy and answer to our issues. (HW)

In response, TEA developed overarching documents targeting governance and leadership, teacher supply and quality teaching, learning and resourcing (particularly for Māori medium schools). They also developed a strategic framework about Tūhoetanga (Tūhoe identity, language and culture).

In HW’s view, it was the Tūhoetanga Curriculum Framework that mainstream schools adopted very quickly. The document clarified how they should go about developing their own local curriculum with Tūhoe communities. By providig a framework that included principles of teaching and learning te reo Māori as well a focus on Tūhoe identity and culture HW believed that schools were able to be more confident in their approaches and had begin to incorporate aspects into their planning and policy documents. From there, HW felt it necessary for schools to improve at transferring theory to practice wherein the impacts could be more clearly observed in individual classrooms.

TEA schools are encouraged to develop local curricula drawing from three main areas: collective knowledge and expertise of teachers, community input and Tūhoe education fora:

What we’ve got the kura to do was personalise their kaupapa you know, use their community name and all of its history as what I would call the platform especially around identity and culture, it didn’t matter whether they had the Reo but as long as their kids could relate to their community. (HW)

A unique feature of TEA’s work with schools has been the availability and willingness of many kaumatua, fluent speakers of Te Reo Māori and community members with tribal

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knowledge to support work with schools. As one example, HW shared how within one community more than forty kaumatua offered to contribute to a tribal education resource that involved recording their iwi stories. This was thought to be in contrast to some other tribal areas, such as Ngāi Tahu in the South Island, which has struggled with inter- generational transmission due to very few kaumatua and a large number of schools spread across a massive geographical area.

HW and CR consider good relationships essential for supporting improvements and change in schools. The prior relationships established by TEA were beneficial when establishing Te Kauhua agreements with the three Tūhoe mainstream schools:

As part of Te Kauhua at present we’re working with three mainstream schools but in saying that those three schools have attached bilingual units and prior to the inclusion of the Te Kauhua it was those units that I was working with so for a lot of schools I’d already developed the relationship which is important in the schools that we’re working with. Other relationship I mean that I had contact with the community to start off with, with the principals, with the boards of trustees working through the different contracts that are already there, working with classroom teachers both in classroom practice and at the planning level with assessments as well as working with students so my contact had already been developed. My points of contact had been already developed. (HW)

As improvements have been made across schools, there has been a reduction in families moving their children between schools, but competition remains.

The National Coordinator MRC made the following observation about TEA’s Te Kauhua work:

What Tūhoe has done very well in terms of identifying some of the schools which have particular needs, the schools where they’ve worked on a relationship with, establishing what the opportunity is, what the needs are and then looking at putting a plan around that about what activities and things can we do or can they support their schools with, that also align with other pieces of work because it’s important that it’s not an isolation that Te Kauhua isn’t a new thing you know it becomes that separate stream but it can relate to Tōku Ora, Tōku Tūhoetanga [an already established Tūhoe education initiative], it can relate to the other strategies but this can be a vehicle for what’s being offered in that rohe and in some ways we are kind of working it out as we move forward, it is an exploratory approach because it’s new and it’s different.

While the three Tūhoe mainstream schools (Taneatua, Waimana and Kutarere) were included in TEA’s wider education programme and community of practice, it was not until 2011, when TEA accepted an invitation to participate in Te Kauhua, that it really considered the needs of its three mainstream schools, separate from the ten Māori-

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medium schools. Te Kauhua provided an opportunity for TEA to have a narrow, deep focus and develop a work programme focused on those schools’ specific needs. This process had just begun at the time of the National Hui.

In summary:

• A small number of schools (13 in total) with only three mainstream schools were included in Te Kauhua.

• Student population is 90 per cent Tūhoe, 99 per cent Māori.

• The benefit of many years’ previous education work has produced strategic documents and plans, which can cross-pollinate other education efforts.

• Inter-generational transmission of language and culture from kaumatua to students and teachers.

• Tailoring of schools’ curricula to their local community (place based). • Relationships take time and are beneficial in affecting improvements.