Top te reo Ma¯ori marks on the up

Kahotea Gardiner wasn’t brought up speaking Ma¯ori at home, but last year gained some of the highest marks in the country for te reo.

The Rotorua 18-year-old took out the top NCEA scholarship for te reo Ma¯ori, as well as gaining scholarship in te reo rangatira, the total immersion paper.

Gardiner (Te Arawa, Tainui, Mataata, Takitimu) is part of a trend, uncovered as part of a Stuff data analysis, that has seen a growing number of Ma¯ori students gaining te reo scholarships.

Journalists analysed a decade of NCEA data provided to Stuff’s School Report project.

That showed that the rate of students with whakapapa Ma¯ori who are awarded te reo NCEA scholarships has been steadily increasing over the last decade, from 1.3 per 10,000 students in 2010, to 5.6 per 10,000 in 2020. To put this growth in perspective, te reo scholarships more than tripled over the last decade, while no other subject increased by more than 51 per cent.

Kura kaupapa Ma¯ori (Ma¯ori immersion schools) drove almost all of that growth, Stuff’s data showed.

The head of the Ma¯ori Language Commission said teenagers were now emerging from high school with a proficiency in te reo not seen for decades.

Gardiner’s reo journey started aged 5. ‘‘My parents can’t speak Ma¯ori, but they made the decision to put us in kura kaupapa Ma¯ori so then we will be fortunate enough to have our own language,’’ she said.

‘‘I didn’t realise how fortunate I was until I was at high school,’’ she said.

After starting at Te Kura o te Kouto in Rotorua, she started to recognise how many people couldn’t speak te reo and how that made them feel, she said.

There was a ‘‘collective passion’’ for te reo Ma¯ori at Te Kouto, Gardiner said.

‘‘Everyone’s on the same kaupapa and they’re all enjoying it.’’

Ngahiwi Apanui ((Nga¯ti Porou, Nga¯ti Hine and Te Wha¯nau a-Apanui, Nga¯ti Kahungunu, Tu¯hoe) is the chief executive of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Ma¯ori, the Ma¯ori Language Commission.

Students leaving kura kaupapa with high levels of language proficiency were part of the new ‘‘production line’’ ensuring the language’s survival, he said.

‘‘What we’re finding now is it’s no longer the grandparents or the parents that are handing down te reo Ma¯ori; Ma¯ori children are learning te reo Ma¯ori at school.

‘‘It’s them who will be the next generation of parents that will hand the language down to their children.’’

Young people were coming out of school ‘‘with a proficiency that we haven’t seen in the country prior to say 1990, when most of the speakers of te reo Ma¯ori were native speakers,’’ he said.

Shona West (Nga¯ti Porou, Nga¯ti Kahungunu) has taught te reo for close to four decades and said she was incredibly excited for the future of the language.

West is principal of Hukarere Girls’ College, a Ma¯ori boarding school in Hawke’s Bay, and coconvenor for Te Huarahi Ma¯ori Motuhake, the Ma¯ori body of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA).

Government initiatives such as the Ka Hikitia, the Ma¯ori language strategy, and the national learning priorities introduced in 2019, were helping more students gain higher NCEA scores, West said.

More importantly, though, greater iwi involvement in education was pushing te ao Ma¯ori to the forefront.

It was the will of Ma¯ori people to revitalise te reo that was driving it, she said. Government policy and money followed.

‘‘It’s the passion and the belief and the strength of character — that’s been absolutely pivotal.’’

It was not enough for students to get a te reo NCEA scholarship just to put it on their CV, West said.

‘‘What I want to see them do is to make it pragmatic, is to hear it being spoken in their homes, and in the shops.

‘‘You can only normalise it when you’re using it every day.’’

Apanui shared West’s excitement at a generation of ‘‘very strongly bicultural and bilingual youngsters’’.

But that was tempered with concern for the students who were not achieving so highly.

‘‘Probably for every successful Ma¯ori-speaking youngster that you’re seeing coming out of Ma¯ori medium, there are probably 10 or 20 times more that aren’t,’’ he said.

‘‘Those are the people we really need to focus on as well.’’

Stuff’s data showed overall NCEA achievement levels for a¯konga Ma¯ori (Ma¯ori learners) were similar no matter whether students attended Ma¯ori medium or mainstream classes.

Scholarships and endorsements – students gaining NCEA with merit or excellence – were slightly higher at kura kaupapa.

Apanui said the impact of Ma¯ori immersion went beyond exam results. Kura kaupapa reinforced Ma¯ori identity and values, and produced rangatahi who left school ‘‘incredibly comfortable in their Ma¯ori skin’’, he said.

‘‘They’re confident, they’re visionary, they’re strong, they’re innovative.’’ The difference with Ma¯ori medium was the high expectations: they weren’t just expected to pass, but to ‘‘smash’’.