Source: Radio New Zealand
The tino rangatiratanga haki (flag) outside Parliament on the day of the Treaty Principles Bill introduction. RNZ / Emma Andrews
The Waitangi Tribunal has been told the draft school history curriculum is badly written and inaccurate.
It has also heard that the government should not have last year cut schools’ legal obligation to enact the Treaty of Waitangi.
The tribunal this week held an urgent inquiry into that decision and into curriculum changes following complaints by teacher union the Educational Institute and Northland iwi Ngāti Hine and hapū Te Kapotai.
They opposed last year’s surprise treaty decision and new school curriculums they said sidelined Māori knowledge and history and the Treaty.
Watson Ohia from Ngā Kura-ā-Iwi told the tribunal the 53 iwi schools had an agreement to work with the Education Ministry.
He said the curriculum changes and the Treaty law change broke that deal.
“Honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the education system does not require perfection. It requires good faith. It requires the Crown to act as the partner it promised to be. To come to the table before decisions are made, not after,” he said.
Ohia said the government should stop all of its education reforms, including replacing the NCEA and rewriting the curriculum, and consult fully with Māori.
“Not a briefing, not a submission portal, a designed process. One that actually incorporates our philosophies, our frameworks, our ways of knowing into the design itself, ” he said.
“For too long the Crown has treated our knowledge, our language, our tikanga as a strand to be woven into a fabric it has already designed. Picked up when it suits, set aside when it doesn’t.”
The inquiry covered the government’s rewrite of the school curriculum to be more knowledge-focused.
History Teachers Association representative Jane Jarman told the tribunal the history curriculum was particularly bad.
She said it was full of distortion and obfuscation that would harm Māori students.
“If this curriculum is allowed to stand, Māori students who study at state schools will receive a Eurocentric education that invalidates their lived history including their status as mana whenua,” she said.
She said the curriculum was supposedly rewritten to restore balance, as per the National and ACT parties’ coalition agreement, but instead it was politicised.
“Are we restoring balance by reassuring everybody that it’s okay Pākehā did lots of really good things and we’re going to miss out lots of the bad things that they did,” she said.
“Just to give you some context for that, the section on the New Zealand Wars is seven lines. The section on the Liberal [government] era is a whole entire page. That’s not balance, that’s disproportionate.”
Jarman said the curriculum replaced the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum which was developed after a campaign by students from Otorohanga.
“This is not the curriculum that they asked for. It is not politically neutral, it is not balanced and it is certainly not world-leading,” Jarman said.
Education Ministry officials told the tribunal that despite the change to the Treaty obligation, schools still had to monitor and report on Māori children’s achievement.
They said the new curriculums set for the first time a mandatory minimum level of te reo Māori that schools must teach.
They acknowledged there was less consultation in the curriculum work because the government wanted to move quickly and did not want to co-design the curriculums with the sector.
The ministry’s head, Ellen MacGregor-Reid, said the government did not see the Treaty as an impediment to its education goals.
“The government’s position is that duty sits with the Crown rather than with school boards and the government is clear that the obligations for Te Tiriti remain and are important for education,” she said.
The hearing is scheduled to finish on Friday.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
