Te tika i roto i te STEM te hangarau kurutetenga

Equity in STEM Symposium

Presentations and insights from our Equity in STEM Symposium

About the STEM symposium

In April 2021 we hosted the Equity in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Symposium: Enabling Māori and Pacific Success.

We were honoured to host over 450 people from more than 150 schools and organisations.

Our presenters and panelists came from leaders who successfully involve high proportions of Māori and Pacific ākonga in STEM. They provided practical tools to help encourage ākonga into STEM pathways.

Ngā mihi nui to all our presenters and panelists. You can view the presentations below.

Actions for Māori and Pacific student success in STEM

At the end of the symposium attendees were asked to think of actions they might take to support Māori and Pacific success in STEM. 

Over 140 attendees gave us feedback. This feedback represented 80 organisations, including secondary schools, wharekura, tertiary education organisations, universities, government agencies, sector-related organisations and STEM academies.

Common STEM action points

Attendees listed these action points the most:

  • build stronger relationships with Māori and Pacific students
  • focus on reducing or stopping streaming of classes
  • focus on teaching about STEM and STEM careers and make sure this teaching matches ākonga career choices
  • improve the support structures available to ākonga
  • kōrero with colleagues to encourage change
  • make learning more relevant to ākonga by developing more appealing resources
  • set and express higher expectations for Māori and Pacific success.
Young student studying tomatoes in greenhouse

Georgia Whitta's tips for teaching STEM

To encourage Māori and Pacific students:

  • Design your study together - ask your students about what they'd like to study. A Google search can show great workshops, articles and lessons from Māori and Pacific STEM experts and role models.
  • Get your names right - learn how to pronounce Māori and Pacific names right. Ask your ākonga to correct you until you get it right.
  • Make STEM group work - Māori and Pacific people have been raised to not question authority. This can make them quiet or less likely to talk about work in class. Group work helps ākonga talk to the teacher as a group - it's less alienating and more comfortable.
  •  Set up desks in groups - Māori and Pacific ākonga work well in groups. Arrange desks so ākonga can talk and work together
  • Understand your students - understand your ākonga responsibilities. Church, family, funerals and wedding commitments may be different for Māori and Pacific students. Our commitments can be huge, so please be understanding.
  • Use Māori and Pacific examples - for example, use Māori or Pacific names in examples, use the food we eat for mathematics, waka navigation for physics problems. 

About some of our presenters

Judge Andrew Becroft

Judge Andrew Becroft was appointed the Children’s Commissioner in June 2016. Before this role he was the Principal Youth Court Judge and was appointed a District Court Judge in 1996.

After graduating from Auckland University in 1981, he practised law in Auckland and assisted with the establishment of the Mangere Community Law Centre.

Judge Becroft is married with three adult tamariki, aged 24, 23 and 19.

Glenis Philip-Barbara

Glenis Philip-Barbara is the Assistant Māori Commissioner at the Children’s Commission and is Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Uepōhatu and Clan McDonald.

Glenis has 30 years' experience as a community advocate, a senior public service leader; working with whānau, hapū and iwi to recover mātauranga Māori. She is motivated to make sure all tamariki know their whakapapa, are connected to their whānau and grow up to be amazing tipuna for the next generations.

Dr Eruera Prendergast-Tarena

Dr Eruera Tarena is of Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui descent and is the Executive Director for Tokona te Raki: Maori Futures Collective. Tokona te Raki is an indigenous centre for social innovation under the mana of Ngāi Tahu.

He is establishing a Rangatahi Futures Academy for rangatahi Māori to use mātauranga Māori to create solutions for the future.

He has interested in systems thinking, innovation tools and organisation learning and applying these through mātauranga Māori to create change.

Visit the Tokona Te Raki website to find out more about streaming

Streaming on Tokona Te Raki website (external link)

Georgia Whitta

Georgia Whitta is studying towards a Bachelor of Medical Sciences with Honours for research in Paediatric Orthopaedics, and is on placement at Middlemore Hospital.

She is of Cook Islands descent, was raised in Palmerston North, and is a proud Amanaki STEM Academy alumni.

Georgia is a keen advocate for Māori and Pasifika students and is a STEM Ambassador for NZQA.

Arihia Stirling

Arihia Stirling has tribal affiliations to Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Tahu, and Ngāti Whātua. She is the Tumuaki of Te Kura Māori o Ngā Tapuwae in Mangere East, a Māori Immersion school which she has led for the last 25 years.

She is passionate about Māori Education and has a number of advisory positions which makes sure her positive views are heard. Arihia’s desire is that students and their whānau live prosperous lives.

Dr Te Taka Keegan

Dr Te Taka Keegan is an Associate Professor in Computing, and Associate Dean Māori at the University of Waikato.

Te Taka has worked on a number of projects involving the Māori language and technology. These include the Māori Niupepa Collection, Te Kete Ipurangi, the Microsoft keyboard, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office in Māori, Moodle in Māori, Google Web Search in Māori, and the Māori macroniser.

In 2017, he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.

Misa Tovia Va’aelua

Misa Tovia Va’aelua is a culture builder, Pasifika Advocate and Tech Founder. He is the General Manager of rhipe Australasia and the Chairperson of Pasifika in IT (information technology). Pasifika in IT are experienced and knowledgeable industry professionals with a passion for IT and a heart for the Pacific Island community.

He is a proud son of Samoa and Aotearoa and is committed to seeing Pacific communities educated, equipped and employed across all areas of the IT industry.

Dr Hana O’Regan

Dr Hana O’Regan is the Tumu Whakarae (CEO) of CORE Education. Hana is a published author and composer and is recognised internationally for her work in indigenous language acquisition (how we learn language) and revitalisation (increasing language use).

A graduate of Te Panekiretanga – Institute of Excellence in Te Reo Māori, Hana has a passion for equity in education. Her career has meant working with organisations, businesses and individuals to support and enhance positive outcomes for learners and whānau.

Viliami Teumohenga and Tanya Koro

Viliami Teumohenga and Tanya Koro are passionate parents who created the Amanaki STEM Academy (ASA) project. It began as a homework group with their children and a few of the neighbours' kids studying around the kitchen table. Today, Amanaki has 51 registered students from around the Manawatū region.

The Amanaki vision is to make excellence in STEM normal for Pasifika secondary school students. Part of this is working with students to value STEM and strengthen their overall wellbeing - mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

In 2018, Viliami received the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Pacific Education Award at The Sunpix Awards.

For more information about Amanaki STEM Academy visit their website.

Amanaki STEM Academy website (external link)

Naomi Manu

Naomi Manu is the Director of the Pūhoro STEM Academy which is hosted at Massey University. Their vision is to be the centre of excellence for Māori STEM achievement in Aotearoa.

The Academy was launched in 2015 with 97 rangatahi from Manawatū schools. In May 2021, Hon. Kelvin Davis, Associate Minister of Education, announced a financial support package of $2.97m over the next 3 years to grow the academy from 1,000 students to 5,000 students.

Meschka Seifritz 

Meschka Seifritz joined the Pūhoro programme whilst a Year 11 high school student. She is now studying co-ordinates tutors across the country.

Meschka has recently been awarded a Tuia Mayoral Mentoring Award. She'll be mentored by the Palmerston North Mayor, which will further grow her leadership and community engagement skills.

For more information about Pūhoro STEM Academy visit their website.

Pūhoro STEM Academy website (external link)

Michaela Latimer

Michaela Latimer is employed as the Pou Hapori (Community Liason Manager) for Genesis. Michaela is passionate about enabling people and communities to flourish (grow well). Her work is woven with her voluntary roles in community projects, mostly focussed on the environment and young people.

Rawiri Gibson

Rawiri Gibson is a Principal Analyst at NZQA where he is helping lead the organisation’s focus on equity.

Rawiri ran the final session of the day where attendees were asked to share potential actions they might take as a result of what they had learnt. 

View videos of presentations

STEM Symposium 2021

Video transcript

[Judge Andrew Becroft appears on stage in a black suit and tie]
[Speaks in te Reo Māori]

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā rangatira, e ngā kuia, e te iwi o te rohe, e ngā hau e wha, tēnā koutou, mihi mai, karanga mai. He pai ki te kōrero ki a koutou e tēnei rā. Talofa lava, malo e lelei, fakalofa lahi atu, kia orana, nisa bula vanaka, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. 

Imagine, and it's not beyond the realms of possibility, that the Minister of Education or the Minister of Social Development or even the Prime Minister was to ask you, "What is your vision for out of our New Zealand's children?"


It's a good question. As we start this conference, a big picture question, when the Book of Proverbs says "Where there is no vision, the people perish, a group atrophies, it's paralyzed. Makes no progress, though starting point surely is what is your vision? I want you to take one minute with the person next to you or less and say what would be your vision overall and then I'll tell you mine.

 

[Judge Andrew Becroft moves to talk to a woman on the stage as two more people enter the stage. Background noise of the audience chattering and clinking cups.]


I would love. I would love that we had more time and I would love to hear your answers. And I used to talk about Martin Luther King's vision and his great speech in 1963, and someone said, Andrew, why don't you have a vision for Aotearoa? So I've got one and it's a T-shirt. Some of you know, I like to model the T shirts.


Question for you is, here is it, Who is it? Where is it? This is a good, I think, New Zealand vision. Where's the clicker? Right. This is it. You know, when it was? 1975. Dame Fiona Cooper, "Take care of our children. Take care of what they hear. Take care of what they see. Take care of what they feel.  For how the children grow. 
So will be the shape of Aotearoa." That's a wonderful three-fold challenge to bear in mind. And Glenis and I would drop everything to come to a group such as this because whether you see it in these terms or not, in your work with an education in the STEM subjects, you are growing a nation and it's a wonderful opportunity.
You are unlocking the door. Graham Greene, the author, said "There's always a moment in childhood when an adult for a child opens the door and lets the future in." mind when in the best sense that is what you are a door witness to a future nation builders. And it's a wonderful opportunity. And the title of the talk we were asked together to talk about inequity for children in New Zealand.
And, you know, we didn't put a question mark after the title. UNICEF in 2018 said New Zealand had one of the most unequal education systems in the world. New Zealand has one of the most unequal education systems in the world, by which they mean the gap between those that achieve academically in our model one in our system and those that don't is one of the widest in the world, which of course takes place in a wider context in New Zealand of inequality.


And I can remember the day that my son came home and his first day in secondary school and said, Dad, I think I'm got a good class. You will be pleased or not in the cabbage class. And you know, I never knew what that meant. And he said, What's the cabbage class, son? He said, Oh, that's the thickos for whom there's no hope.

That's what he said, his own words. So there's something wired in. I'm talking seven years ago. Might have all changed, but there's something wired in that even kids get about expectations and inequality within our education system. And I think it's sad. But at the same time, what a vision and what an opportunity we have to do better.


And we decided, Glenis and I, that we do this together, because if we're talking about equality in a way, this is now small and rather stumbling first attempts within our own office and then the roles that we have to demonstrate. I hope equality and we are often talked about to the government: "Why can't we have co commissioners?"


And they said, "that sounds a good idea. Maybe we're not quite ready for that". I said, "Well, I can appoint an assistant Māori commissioner." They said  "Well, that's not a very good title." I said. "Of course it's not. Can we give a co commissioner?" And they said "Well might you be accused of, of, of trying to tie the government's hands?" Possibly Judge.


I said "Not might. No, not possibly. Absolute. Yes, that's what I want to do. I'd like to wire in a co-Māori non-Māori leadership model and we'll talk together from that experience ourselves." And we don't have all the answers and we're learning slowly, but it's been great to be able to do this and address these sorts of issues together.

00:06:33:10 - 00:06:54:10
Speaker 1
And I'll start off and I'll talk generally the context of inequality in New Zealand, perhaps we'll talk more specifically. I'm not an educational expert, but I wanted to challenge you, I guess, and encourage you on behalf of all children in New Zealand, and then I'll make some concluding comments. I'd love to say there's no contempt of court today.


You can interrupt challenge, shout out. It's a bit harder. I know if you think anything said that is discordant, but I certainly hope we have time for questions. But an initial question for you is how many under 18 year olds - That's the definition of children worldwide - How many under 18 year olds are there in New Zealand? Anyone want to guess?


I mean you are the intelligentsia of the country, STEM teachers! You'll know this.  How many under 18 year old either in New Zealand. Any guesses? A million have got a million on the table or have more than a million less than a million. 1.3? 1.5? I was at a Rotary Club once and that was 800000 to 2.4 million. This is the answer.


It's nearly a quarter of the population who at some stage you'll be dealing with, without much of a voice, and often seldom heard, certainly without a vote and not much influence. And I'm asked, "Well, how well do our New Zealand children do overall?" And there are three really good percentage figures that help explain that. 70% of our children do well and our position conditions of advantage materially well looked after, some do world-leadingly well.


Well when athletics competitions and New York hip-hop dance competitions and send Fran bronze medals at the Winter Olympics aged 16. I mean on any analysis, whether it's the UNICEF child or not, most of our kids do well and some do well, world-leadingly well. 20% however, struggle with adversity, in and out of adversity. And for them life is tough and 10%, know chronic, long-term, intergenerational, virtually permanent material hardship and disadvantage.


That's 123,000 New Zealand children and young people, who on a doorknock survey come from families without what most of us would call the basics. The basics that Eden Park filled up twice over with spectators, that many children. That is not the New Zealand I was brought up with when I went to Kilbirnie primary school, Evans Bay Intermediate, Rangatahi College.


We now know inequality in New Zealand as never before and any inequality in education action and inequality in education reflects that wider issue in New Zealand, where we now are much more diverse, stratified, marginalized New Zealand than was never the case and it didn't happen gradually. Let's bust that myth. It happened virtually overnight in the early 1990s, following the global financial crisis.


We took decisions to slash benefits and we've never made up the difference. And we have this, I think, mangled structure in New Zealand where it's great that we do well for over sixty fives. We do as well for them as nearly any country in the world, and that's terrific. We shouldn't change that, but we do relatively compared to what we do for old people, six times worse for under 18 year olds. We could if we wanted to change things. But as a country we haven't. And you'd have to say now in 2021, we have made some deliberate decisions to wire in inequality in our structures for children and young people. And you're at the front line of that.


And I don't need to tell you of the challenges and I need to tell you how fundamental STEM subjects are to that, to breaking that inequality. But it's sad, really, isn't it? And a country that could, if it wanted to do so differently for children, we haven't. We talk a great game, so wonderful vision the Prime Minister has for New Zealand to be the best place in the world to be a child.
It's wonderful. We're on track, slowly but surely to halve child poverty in 2028. But it needn't ever have been this way. And many of you, I think, are picking up the pieces.

 

Now, what's the underlying cause of that. We can have a great discussion about that.
I think Science, Technology, English and Math teachers would be capable of having that discussion maybe with Geography and History teachers would say they'd want to have it. But I say three things are behind that Seventy Twenty Ten - the inequality, the inequity that we're talking about, I mean,  my three and you would have your own three, I'm sure we've talked about that one.


Of course, being in the 10% isn't a life script for inevitable bad life outcomes. I'm not saying that. I mean, poverty doesn't cause bad life outcomes, we know that, but it certainly elevates the risk for bad life outcomes. And we know in the stat summary we don't want to come to deficit focus, but Māori and Pasifika are over-represented in that 10%, and that's an underlying cause.


I don't think we grasped nearly importantly enough how important the first thousand days are, not your area, but you inherit a situation when the first thousand days aren't capitalized on and focused. And we have to be honest, we still experience the enduring legacy of colonization and modern day systemic bias or racism. I mean, people don't like the C word; colonization, but it's the reality for our country.


And I used to talk about unconscious bias. And at a conference like this, a kuia stood up and said, Can I ask you a question, Judge? I said, "Sure". She said, "You know, you talk about unconscious bias, so, sort of it just drips off the tongue. But my definition of unconscious is when someone's knocked out horizontal on the floor, you talk about what you do when you're vertical and alive and well. How can you keep saying that is as unconscious?"

You know, we did a survey, quite a big study with children and young people, many of those who had been, I guess, dislocated from marginalized from education. Education matters to me. They used the word racism. We never asked them. We just said, what are some big issues for you? They used the R word adults in my generation tend to sugarcoat it a bit with 
 "systemic bias, unconscious bias, discrimination". Children and young people are very confident about naming it as racism. And you can look on the website and find the report. It is sobering reading.

The day it came out, I gave an interview was on the way north and we stopped at the Brown Sugar Cafe in Taihape and a teacher came up and said to me somewhat ominously, "You're Judge Becroft the children's commissioner. aren't you?" And I said, "Yeah."  "You've just given an interview and you've just given an interview this morning, haven't you? I said, Yep, you caught us racist teachers. I said, Actually, I didn't. I said, the children that we talked to called some of their teachers racist. I mean, one of the girls said, "what also puts me off are teachers telling me to give up, saying, I'm not going to pass level three without even checking my credits.
I sense stereotypes in my teachers eyes and gestures how they act towards me makes me feel like leaving." Samoan secondary school student. I said, Look, we just passing on the messages from children. You might find it interesting. I say to the website, have a read of it. To her credit. She got back that day and said, "I'm sorry, I misunderstood.
What the children are saying is powerful. We're having a meeting of our school this week to discuss it. Thank you for what you're doing."

All right. Now, children name racism as a significant issue. And I love this quote and I love the challenge that it represents. And it's why we're here today and we're talking about how we fix and address the education environment.
Some of the reason why we have one of the most unequal education systems in the world is beyond the control of teachers. I get that. But some isn't. I guess that's the question. What is it that is that is within our control. That can make a difference. I mean, you teach in the context where there is enormous inequity for Māori and Pasifika in the country and I mean this is this is not something to Labor and it's not something to celebrate.


And, in my daughter's terms it would be a bit of a "debuzz" to emphasize this, but it's important that we know, I mean, the stats tell their own sad story. It's great that ECE is showing signs of real reduction in disproportionality. And I mean, you can widen, widen the analysis. I mean, frankly, it is an international scandal that we even have rheumatic fever in New Zealand - fifth line down.

But more scandalous still is the disproportionality and the utter tragedy that is would have touched many of us indirectly of youth suicide. I mean, this is a side of New Zealand that we cannot avoid and have to face up to. And this is the context for your work. So having said I'm not an educationlist, can I just venture just as I close this beginning part of the presentation, can I just venture some comments with two slides?

The first is what many have called "the tramline gap" faced by tamariki Māori and for that matter, Pasifika. Taking the school deciles and marking them as quintiles with quintile one of course being the most disadvantaged, quintile five being the most advantaged and, Māori being the, the sort of orangey light orange line at the bottom it goes up by quintile, but so does the Pākeha, European and other line go up and it goes up at the same rate.


So whether it's quintile one or quintile five, the gap remains the same. Called The tramline gap, because it's just two sets of tracks that go at the same right. So that raises some questions if you factor out economic advantage, the gap still exists. So there must be a challenge there about how we are teaching. There must be because rich or poor backgrounds, the gap remains the same.


And it's a really interesting question. Put another way, percentage of school leavers with at least an NCEA Level two qualification, this is just standing back. What's really interesting, I am told by the Ministry of Education that those few schools up to about four or five that are right you know achieve at high levels it seems have one thing in common.


Do you know what it is? Any suggestion? Mixed cohort of students, I'm also told, have a very explicit kaupapa Māori or Māori medium approach with a real effort to show and demonstrate cultural connections. And it's an interesting question as to I'm sure it will be addressed: Is there a challenge for us to teach Māori and Pasifika students differently?


Just a question and a challenge that as Children's Commissioner, I raise, all of us searching for answers. And I read recently because I bumped into Hannah Regan in the front row, row Janice and I in Christchurch, I read a report that I guess forms something they're going to be hearing about today. That report talks about the Cambridge classes and flying personal experience and Rangatahi College in 1975, I was involved in the first ever non-streamed class. I mean it was 45 years ago now and it's somewhat anecdotal, but they'd never been a non-streamed class in Rangatahi College was geography. I still remember it. I met students in the school, Pacifica students who I'd never, ever otherwise rubbed shoulders with, and it was terrific. They helped me.I helped them. We had a really enthusiastic teacher, didn't stop me getting 95% school cert geography because people always say, because people always say "if you do non streaming kids who really want to do well, will be prevented from it."The whole class did well, everyone was lifted, everyone benefited. I still think about it. I still talk about it. I still remember our teacher, Mr. Smart.


So I'm excited by today. I'm excited by the opportunities. Yes, of course. We can't shrink from the challenge and the reality of an equity. But if anybody can turn the key and the STEM subjects, it's you. And what a terrific starting point it is. So will that by way of introduction I can I hand over to my co commissioner?


We're trying to act as co commissioners and I think we've got about 15 or 20 minutes each. So Glenis.

[A Māori woman with long hair and a moko enters the stage and stands behind the podium. She is Glenis. Glenis sings a waiata in te Reo Māori]


[Waiata in te reo Māori]

For those of you without any knowledge of all, of te reō Māori, what do you think that song is about? 
What do you think is the message he was trying to convey? I'll give you a hint that wai was composed in wartime. She was sending her out aroha across the waters to her loved one far, far away. And in so doing she captured a moment in time and recorded it for her iwi. And it is a waiata that is sung widely and the place that I call home today.


And because of that waiata, we have never forgotten those tipuna who lost their lives in the war and were laid to rest in foreign lands. An example of mātauranga Māori in action curated, conveyed and living among us. Now for a person without cultural insight, that might just be a song, but with knowledge of te reō, and with the practice of singing and sharing waiata and Hui. As children, we learned the stories of our ancestors and what a blessed existence we lived.

STEM is so much more than what we think it is. And I put to you that every culture will bring its own unique insight into Science, Technology, Mathematics. And this is the opportunity that we have in Aotearoa when we come together to think about the future we want to build for our children.


So in our office, we spend a lot of time listening to young people telling us about their experience of life at school, telling us about their experience of life generally. And for so many, racism has been their experience. Their entire educational experience. Now, when I was a young girl and I have my streaming stories, my end streaming stories, so I'm going to share it now.


When I was a young girl, I went through life under the moniker Glenis Phillip. Now you remember then there was no interweb. You never got to see the photograph of a student before they arrived at your school. And I as the son, as the daughter of a soldier, we got to move around quite a lot.


In fact, we moved every two years or so. So I had the gleeful experience of starting a new school about every two or three years. Now, flying under the name Glenis Philip created an expectation in the minds of my teachers about what I might look like. They certainly didn't expect to greet a little brown girl with long plaits.


I did quite well at school and I was often streamed into the top class, but without exception, every time I started a new school and was streamed into the top class on my very first day, there was a problem. I was a invariably booted down to the cabbage class. Now my father, a very stroppy Pākeha man and an officer in the New Zealand Army, the very next day would stomp into the principal's office and insist that I be returned to the top class where I'd been streamed and would refuse to leave until the matter was rectified.


Now you imagine as a young person, if that's your experience, every time you start a new school and no, it wasn't eight years ago, but the last time it happened to me was in 1981. This is the impact of racism in our country. We deny people a rightful opportunity. We deny people the opportunity to actually see where their intelligence and where their capability might take them based on an assumption about who belongs and who doesn't.


And over time, young people have told us things like this "I'm a library, quiet, filled with knowledge. It's dumb that I'm not asked." The assumption we make about young people and the contribution they might have, sits like this: Heavy on the shoulders of someone who finds themselves in alternative education. Now, while I know the education system and actually the structure and design of it is not within our hands to change what is within our hands to change the assumptions we make when we come face to face with a young person in our orbit.


And I'd wager that "naughty" young person is probably your best hope in STEM, yes?  Unafraid to take risks, insanely curious, is going to push the wire, is actually going to drive you mad with all their questions. Are they not the attributes of a fine scientist? Are they not the attributes of someone unafraid to discover new things?


So my ask of you today, is to mind your assumptions, and to adopt a curious approach to the tamariki and rangatahi in your school who you may not understand. Believe you me, they are libraries filled with knowledge. The fact that we might not understand that knowledge or we might not understand how to access it, is surely not their challenge.


As most of you know, I'm a Gizzy girl through and through, and am absolutely blessed to be a board member on a local STEM champion organization. Tōnui Collab grew out of the opportunity offered to our community by the Mind Lab, and it was picked up by a Ngāti Porou woman and turned into Tōnui. We are a charitable organization.


We operate in our community. Every year, Tōnui Collab creates access for 10,000 or more young people in the Tairāwhiti region to STEM. They come into our little whare and they get to build robots. They get to use augmented reality to tell the stories of Māia Poroaki and Ruapuni. They get to play, they get to learn. They become exposed to a different kind of opportunity, and they love it.


And our little trust provides that opportunity for 10,000 children at the cost of a dollar per child per session. How do we do that? We write funding applications. We fundraise. Because in the place that I call home, the low wage economy has meant that too many of our people are trapped in poverty. So if we're going to lift Tairāwhaiti out of a low wage economy, we need our kids having access to STEM.

Shannon O'Connor is our chief executive and she drives a pretty hardy little ship. Just this year the team have gone mobile and they've moved up the coast to build little STEM hubs all the way up to Wharekahika, which is a three hour drive from Gisborne. Why? Because the kids up there want an opportunity. And you know what the best thing is is during the school holidays, nannies and papas and aunties and uncles and mums and dads, they come down and they have a play to. And so in doing this work and the community, all of a sudden the world of STEM opens up in a way that it hasn't before. The team at Tōnui train teachers. They support teachers in our local community, because when we went out and surveyed the teachers in the schools of Tairāwhiiti, we only found 6% of them were confident to teach STEM subjects.

So where are you when you're a little community organization? You get on with doing something about that. Opening up the world of STEM to our children as a way of adjusting that low wage economy for the future. And already the kids coming through Tōuni, are making digital resources. They are mucking around with the 3D computer, making things that I don't even understand.
They are, being in the best sense of the word, the best tutus they can be, and they know that they descend from the biggest tutu of them all: Māui Tikitiki O Tāranga, Te Haututuoranga Haututu, and our ancestor. So in the spirit of Māui, they get in and they get involved.


Now, I don't need to talk to you all about the digital divide, but it is an issue that requires our urgent attention and action. And the most simple thing that we can do is just stop assuming.  Stop assuming that every child has equal access to an iPad. Stop assuming that the Wi-Fi at a child's home is actually reliable.


Start thinking about the actual hours of access to any facilities that we might have. What those hours might be. What might be required.
COVID exposed this massive iniquity. And the young people I was talking to up in Auckland last week told me that it continues that the expectation that they can reliably continue to study at home, is a false one. And this is in South Auckland. As educators, as educational leaders, we have to be much more curious about the context that our tamariki and ragatahi are learning and we need to stop assuming that they have what we have, because we know; the data tells us, they absolutely don't.


Now, last week I was at Polyfest. Wow. First time ever attending Polyfest. And I tell you what? The young people I met up there and the amazing things they are doing just blew me away. This group, Bubblegum - That's the tagline. "Let's stick together". Cool, eh? This group of young people formed Bubblegum out of a need that they identified during lockdown level four last year when they got safely to lockdown level three. 
They came together to Hui and what they decided needed to be done was that young people needed someone to contact them. So they they were all 12 of them. They used their cell phones to start a call center. They had a list of young people to contact, and they just got on and they rung them up, asked them how they were going.


And through a relationship that they formed with South Seas Health, they found themselves in a position where they could offer practical support, you know; tokens for the laundromat, food vouchers, other things, phone cards, data. The great majority of them wanted data because what the impact of lockdown Level Four was on them was they were they were isolated. Isolation was the big enemy.


What's the opposite of isolation? Connection. So this group of young people, led by a 19-year-old, pulled themselves together, built the call center, and then went on to create opportunities for talanoa. Right around the community. And they continue this day to drive their kaupapa out What's the learning out of that example? For me? Most times us older people should actually just get out of the way.


When we empower young people to lead, we make a huge, huge difference in their lives when we trust them to try something, when we invest in them: Time, resources, faith. From what I've seen in this job so far and yes, only been six months, but from what I've seen so far, they never, ever let us down. The same applies with the equity issue.


What Andrew and I are learning about in this shared role. We're learning about power sharing. We understand that if we are going to make a demonstrable difference for Māori and for Pacific people, Māori and Pacific people need to lead. So on that note, I can see the T-shirt man moving behind me. Have you got your T-shirt?

[Judge Becroft speaks]
So that's us. You've sort of heard from the long and short of it from different perspectives and bringing it together. We've tried to set the scene for what you are doing. I wanted to leave you with a t shirt and leave you with a quote. I'll just put the t shirt on. And then Glenis, she might be able to flip the slide because there's a there's a greater challenge for you. Here's the t shirt. I mean, you are at the forefront of an area where there is injustice, where there is an equity, and what a powerful lobby you are.


I mean, Andrew Little said yesterday at the launch of the new health system, if we think we are an egalitarian, equal society, look again at the stats. We see that as Judges. It's a challenge for Oranga Tamariki. Only you know the challenge it is also for education and you have a wonderful opportunity as a group and collectively, not to stay silent,
Not to be neutral, but to be agents of change for our tamariki and rangatahi. And then that challenge. We wish you collectively the absolute best. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. 

[Audience applause]

[Host] We do have an opportunity to ask questions.


I think I'm told there's an opportunity for one question, so hopefully it's a good one. No pressure after all that. Any questions? Except that you have something.

[Host]
How are we doing? Here's is the question here: How do we empower our children, in particular Māori and Pacific, to speak up about racism? For some it's normalized with the environments instituitonally embedded.

 

[Glenis speaks]
I think it's a really good idea to ask them. To present the problem and then ask them to design the solution. I think these are issues that can be designed for, but understand that in any design looking to combat racism, they need your support. They need you to believe in the inherent humanity, and they will need you to stand up for them.

Judge?

[Judge Beecroft speaks] And I have been in this role, terrifically surprised and really encouraged and I guess chastened to realize when asked, well and appropriately, children and young people have fantastic answers and fantastic contributions that really do change the way we operate and change our policy. I mean, it was Minister Tolley who said to a group of care-experienced children she put together, "What's your number one concern?"


And they said, "If we have to be removed why are we split up from my brothers and sisters?" and, you know, no adult policy maker ever had that in the books. It wasn't in the law. No one thought of it. But it took children, young people, to elevated to it the number one issue. So in my experience, when asked when given the safe opportunities to do so, they will speak up.
They have the answers. Our job is to unlock that door and enable them to do it and to think hard about what conscious and unconscious racism looks like for us personally.

 

Inequity for children in New Zealand video (42.52 mins)

Judge Andrew Becroft and Glenis Philip-Barbara present on the types of inequity tamariki Māori experience. They suggest possible solutions to improve the experience of tamariki Māori

STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

[Screen shows an infographic. It's title is Change is the kaupapa, rangatiratanga is the destination. The first graphic is of a young tama, a wahine with moko and a tane. Above them is a speech bubble that says How do we break the cycle of criminality? The second bubble says What would it take to make kura kaupapa mainstream pedagogy for secondary schools? Under that is a graphic of two Māori gardening vegetables behind a wooden fence.

Above them it says Launch first kaupapa Māori secure wellness facility. The third bubble says What does an indigenous economy look like? How would a digital Māori currency work? Below that is a graphic of three secondary students weaving a korowai. A wahine says We're weaving complicated mathematical patterns, but we also stress tested the fibres and did an environmental report for each.

Another wahine says Each pattern holds meaning. Underneath them it says Ministry plus lab pilot kaupapa Māori secondary school, which naturally unites science, arts, music and storytelling. The next graphic repeats the first graphic, but now they wear special futuristic visors. The wahine says We are ready to kick off the latest deinstitutionalising Government project. We want rangatahi to join. You in?]

[Slide shows NZQA logo Qualify for the future world, kia noho takatū ki tō āmua ao]

[Slide says Tokona te raki Māori Futures Collective, Next Gen Solutions, powered by rangatahi Māori, and fueled by Mātauranga Māori]

[Slide says Dr Eruera Prendergast-Tarena]

Tēnā tātou e te whare, Nei anō te reo o Aoraki mauka, ka pāorororo

I ngā pari karangaranga o koutou maunga kōrero, o koutou wai āta rere, ngā whare o ō koutou tūpuna, tēnā tātou.

Nei anō hoki aku mihi kei te wera,

kei te ahi o tēnei whenua, Te Ātiawa, ō tātou hononga kei waenganui i a tātou, ngā tāngata whenua o tēnei

wāhi, tae atu ki ō tātou whanaunga ngā tāngata o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, tae atu ki ō tātou

whanaunga tāngata tiriti, huri taiāwhio i tō tātou whare, tēnā tātou katoa.

Kia ora, Eruera Tārena tōku ingoa,

Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-a-Apanui.

And um, just apologies as well from Hinepounamu who’s one of our rangatahi researchers, she’s had to uh, go away to a tangi today so ah, ngā mihi kia tatou.

[Slide says Brown skin must be made equal to white skin]

Um awesome to attend a hui around equity for Māori and Pasifika, and ah really I’m like one of those privileged few that like equity is my day job. I’ve managed somehow to con someone into turning that into a profession, but I’d also say a  

mihi toku toa hine Hana, taku ha koe Aunty Arihia hari te me ko tatou te runga tuatahi i runga i tenei i te waka. 

So um we go back to 1848, our tupuna Matiaha Tiramōrehu who launched really the Ngāi Tahu claim, yeah that instigated the petition to Queen Victoria in 1848, and it had those beautiful words, you know ‘by the law of thy covenant, may the brown skin be made equal to the white skin’. And so, we probably wouldn’t even had the word equity back then, when we think that’s seven generations that our people fought for the claim.   

And we don’t think of a treaty settlement as that kind of disruptive innovation that really changed the system, changed fortunes, changed our world.   

Te hira te mea te hou te taku kotahitanga ineinei ah this isn’t a new kaupapa for our people, ah but it’s fantastic to see that we have that tradition of Matiaha. I would also say that um, you know, the legacy of Matiaha.with our Ngāi Tahu claim, it took seven generations to uh, get to the resolution of our treaty settlement. And that doesn’t mean the struggle has ended, but I think we’re in a position now where we’re starting to see a convergence of forces of grand challenges on the horizon.   

And so we’re really not in a situation where we can afford to have seven generations to solve an issue. The reality of it is, you know, the worst case scenario is how people might not even be here in seven generations if we don’t start advancing on some of these fronts. 

So my mahi, and this is really the wahanga that Hinepounamu was going to talk about, was really: how do we start to think around building an army of change-markers, of future changers within our community? And really, you know, helping them to find their purpose and fill their kete with those future-focused skills. 

It’s a really thing about, kind of, systems change, mātauranga Māori style. And what would that look like, and how do we support our young people? Rather than, like, going off into education or more than likely doing an apprenticeship and the status quo and sustaining what is, we start to think around well, how do we support our people to do an apprenticeship in future-making and transformation.  

And ah, next Friday we launch our Māori Futures academy with our first cohort of 10. It’s a bit renegade, uh, we’ll give it a go. But you know, again who better to be designing our future than our rangatahi, they’ll be the ones leading forward. 

[Slide shows graphic of a waka on the ocean with the sun on the horizon. The waka has twin hulls labelled think and do. The sun is labelled next generation solutions. There are rocks in the sea labelled climate change, housing crisis, growing inequalities, systemic racism, future of work. In the skies are stars and a tukituki pattern. The sky says guided by mātauranga Māori.] 
 

Kind of what we do in our mahi, I suppose, is trying to tackle some of those big, grand challenges. And again, starting to think around, well how do we turn purpose and passion into a profession, into a day job.  
 

And really, when we think about things like anti-racist systems change, these are big, messy issues where we don’t have agreement necessarily around what the problem is, let alone what the solution is.  

So our mahi is like the waka, um a part think-tank, a part do-tank. You know, so some of that is around research around systems mapping and data to try and build a picture of what the hell is going on. Ah, talking to rangatahi and even the actors in our system to build awareness of what’s the human experience, and what will work, and actually kicking that into the world of doing and trialling stuff out. Designing, making, testing, and prototyping solutions. 

 So sort of one foot in hui, one foot in do-ey, and I really enjoy the interplay between the two. So probably a couple of little provisos too, to go we’re talking a lot today about equity and in particular, in education. And so I wouldn’t, I’d say I’ve done my apprenticeship in research, I wouldn’t class myself as a researcher, and definitely not an education researcher or an educationalist.  

And ah, a big part of my mahi has actually been trying to look more ahead at the future, a future of work and opportunities for Māori. 

 And so um, pai te rongo to tatou rangatira nei. You know, I loved the um, those words which I thought really resonated with the whakatauki of Kingi Tawhio, mehemea kare kau ana he whakakitenga, ka mate te iwi. You know that without vision, the people are lost. And if we can’t imagine an equitable future, there’s no way in hell we’re going to get there. 

 And I always have that vision of our, ah, Pacific navigators, yeah and they have that concept of seeing the islands. You know, when you’re going out, adventuring across the unknown to discover an island and it hasn’t been discovered yet, you have to have a very clear picture in your mind of that destination. And the moment you don’t have that picture in your mind, you can’t see the island, you are lost in the ocean and doomed.  

[Slide shows two Māori people in a waka, one pointing at the horizon. The slide says Puta i tua, future skills strategy. Haea te awa, wāhia te awa, puta i tua, puta i waho.]
 

So really when we look ah, a piece of work we did in our old, start by kind of looking ahead, rather than ka mua, ka muri sort of doing it the other way around, looking ahead at what some of the opportunities are and then kind of kind of loop back around to where we are in the present. And what are the kind of barriers that are in a place that we need to remove in order to achieve and realise the destination of our rangatahi.
 

And so um, when COVID struck, yeah you kind of start to think around and draw upon that tupuna wisdom, and we have a karakia and our tupuna um Rākaihautū, the navigator, on the waka Uruaokapuarangi. That’s the first human arrival in Te Waipounamu, and the waka Uruao was beset by storms, all of these huge big waves and dark clouds. So really in a position where things weren’t looking too good for the waka. 

 And so he recited a karakia and used his toki kapaki to sever the waves apart and to create an awa, a pathway through the storm for the waka to move forward. And the karakia goes haea te awa, you know, that cleaving of the waves wāhia te awa, opening up the path, puta i tua, puta i waho. 

And really that idea of how do we move beyond the horizon, beyond the realms of the known into the unknown, into a place and experience we haven’t been to before. And that’s really our kind of metaphor when talking about the future and even equity and post-COVID recovery. How do we achieve an equitable future, which is something we haven’t been to before, rather than sticking in this dark, cloud place?   

So where’s that hope beyond the horizon? And so we’ve been working on a, what we call a puta i tua, a future skills strategy.   

[Slide says: Vision: imagining a future where Māori thrives and live their best lives. Strategic outcomes: An additional 6000+ Māori in our takiwā are in high skilled jobs. An additional 400+ rangatahi leaving secondary education each year with Level 3 NCEA]
 

Um, beautiful vision, this morning, and again, you know, wouldn’t it be awesome, for my part, shouldn’t our kids grow thinking that Aotearoa is the best place to be Māori. Everyone I grew up with in Aranui that moved to the Gold Coast tells me otherwise! You know, and there’s something wrong with that. So you know, that vision of: how do we get to that space where we’re back in that navigator mindset, controlling our own destiny and in charge of our pathway forward?  
 

And one piece of work was just simple, when we talk about equity, when we talk about STEM, these are both principles but we have to figure out how do we apply that whole Kiwi number-eight wire to an idea like equity? How do we make that tangible, make that real and concrete in practice?  

So one thing that we’ve been tutuing with is, how do we just put a number to equity? In the post-COVID recovery for the Ngāi Tahu takiwā, you know equity is an additional 6,000 Māori moving into high-skilled, high-paid, high-growth jobs of the future. That’s an equitable target that we would have to achieve to get there.   
 

And an additional 400 rangatahi on top of what we’re, of what our current high school system is currently delivering. So just in a Ngāi tahu takiwā alone equity would mean an additional 400 rangatahi leaving school with NCEA and University Entrance.  

So when we talk about equity, that’s kind of what it looks like for our takiwā, and it gives us a target, a metric to keep an eye on.  

 [Slide shows a graphic of a traditional pa, spiralling up a hill, with pou, marae, whare, whare kai, gardens, bush, sentries, gardeners and people arriving at the pa by waka. The graphic is called The Art and science of placemaking. By the waka it says: We arrive. We connect to place and position. Outside the first gate it says: We survey, local resources and opportunities. We shape the land, we learn how to utilise its resources. We establish balance, with the land and the needs of our people. By the gardeners it says: We thrive and Papatūānuku thrives. By the bush is a path, and it says: But we were cut off from our way through colonisation. An arrow points to the marae and it says: We need to address our new reality and rebuild again.]
 

And just really that whole idea of balance, of placemaking, that you know our tupuna arrived, you know, they were from Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Tahiti, Rarotonga, you know these Polynesians used to nice warm climates and sort of arrive into a whenua with big mountains and cold water. But our people adapted to the land and the land adapted to the people, and achieved that balance. 

 And then we’ve had that disruption which has tipped us out of balance. And so really that’s the same thing again with COVID and the recovery; that we’ve had this disruption, things are out of balance. But how do we not go to Māori being three times or four times the unemployment rate of Pakeha to then returning to this space when we were two to three times the unemployment rate of Pakeha?  

 [Slide shows a line chart that shows an upward trend from 2020 to 2026. The title is The Outlook - employment protection, Ngai Tahū Takaiwa 2020 to 2026. From a start point of around 54,000 in 2020, the chart predicts a rise to 50,000 new jobs by 2026]
 

How do we not go back to the way it was and move forward to something better? Um, we try to keep an eye on things. And so even just in our takiwā really interesting where towards the end of last year we started just like forecasting, what are those opportunities going to look like for our people? And immediately post-COVID, it was pretty dark. We kind kind of had this big ‘U’, you know, a big nasty recession. And so we updated our work in February, and you can kind of see, it’s not looking as bad as we initially thought. So part of me is like, great, we’re not in for a huge nasty recession.  

 [Slide shows a graphic of a whanau standing in a storm under umbrellas. The people are saying: I want to be a wind energy expert when I grow up, It keeps flooding we need higher ground. Aue! Tawhirimatea is strong but so are we, If we pool all our efforts we can establish ourselves to avoid the next great storm, Let's seize this moment we've been preparing for many years, we will need to start building now.

In the distance are factories under lightning and rain. In front of them is the sun with a Māori led solutions economy. This includes, packaging and food innovation, leadership and problem solving, rongōa and healing, papakāinga housing, ecosystem recovery and indigenous forestry. A toa wahine says: Delivering on our Te Tiriti partnership, equity. 

A wahine in korowai chants mō kā uri.]
 

But when you look at that, and talking to our people, you know, our kaumatua had all experienced recessions before; the 1980s, Rogernomics, you know, the pā that used to have a post office and like the aunty who lost her job and has never had a job since. You know, the services in the pā that never returned, uh, all the uncles who cut their white, freezer works gumboots into jandals and all of these things where all of our people, the impacts of Rogernomics and the recession and economic reforms hit Māori first, hardest, and longest. 

 And even when you think of things like the 2009 GFC, um it took Māori 12 years to recover from that hit. And when you’re looking at that to go, was that a pattern we want to sustain, that Māori are always last on for an opportunity and first on when we hit an economic speed bump.  

And so really looking at that, just thinking where we are in the future and our response to the COVID recession, and the prospect of growing inequality. And even the phrase ‘build back better’, straight away our framing of the future starts from the past. And what are our responses? You know, kind of the ministry of works, let’s build our way out of this.  
 

Uh, and again, how that kind of rolls for Māori and Pasifika is that we end up concentrating more of our people in areas where we’re holding a shovel or a lollipop sign. Where we are dangerously vulnerable to future economic change that we know is not just on the horizon, but probably, with the result of COVID, is kind of accelerating a bit as well. 

 So when we think about that to go: if we keep doing what we are doing, we’re going to see the same outcomes we are currently achieving magnified as our younger, browner, Māori Pasifika population makes up a larger proportion of our population, our workforce, and eventually also too, our voting public.  
 

Versus, what happens if we try and do something better? So rather than focusing on building back better, which is really a strategy of incrementalism, how do we do what we’re doing with maybe little bits and a little bit better, to actually go: well, how do we build a bridge towards a transformational future, an equitable future?  

 And that’s where STEM and those future-focused skills are really critical to achieving that shift. From us going, stepping out of that space where the cycle repeats and opening a pathway to an equitable future for our people.  

 [Slide shows a chart of the projected job openings and losses Ngāi Tahū  2021 to 2026. It's called The Opportunity. The line chart shows a mixed trend. Starting from 0 in 2021, job losses trend for low-skilled, semi-skilled and skilled people. The losses are more for low-skilled and semi-skilled people. Almost 5,000 more low-skilled people lose jobs in 2022 compared to skilled people.

Highly skilled people start from the baseline and don't lose jobs. Instead, jobs steadily increase for this section of people. In 2026 its projected that there will be at least 20,000 new jobs for them. That's compared to almost 14,000 for skilled people, around 8,000 for semi-skilled people and around 6,000 for low-skilled people.

The chart predicts that there will be 50,000 new jobs by 2026. The majority of these jobs will pay over $50,000 but in areas under-represented by Māori. Upskilling Māori is the key to reducing this gap.]
 

Ah, the Spinoff did some great work around that kind of K-shaped economy with the escalators, and I suppose this is a little bit similar, with what you can kind of see is that we have a significant, um, pick up in our economy and forecast in terms of job growth from about 2023 to 2025. 

But again, that idea that disasters and recessions don’t hit people equally. And what you can see, that white line, is really that highly skilled, high-paid, high-growth careers of the future is what’s kicking up. Whilst that yellow line down below is that low skill, low pay, which is where, you know, half of our Māori workforce are concentrated and where we are very vulnerable.  

 And what you also see is kind of that hollowing out in the middle, that those sort of semi-skilled and skilled jobs are the ones that are sort of fairly flat. So I think we have not just a gap in time, that we have a couple of years to prepare, grab a surfboard and ride that wave of new opportunity from 2023 onwards, but we also have a gap in skills. 

 And this is where I think NZQA has a really significant role because when we keep our mental models around qualifications and jobs, uh, we end up building traps for our people. Whereas if the measure for gaining a job in that future economy is a qualification or a degree then our people are already disadvantaged and we are amplifying inequity. 

 So we need to start to think around, how do we transition our mindsets from qualifications and having a job for life to thinking that our rangatahi are forecast to have 18 jobs over five careers? And fantastic work by the Foundation for Young Australians and Hinepounamu was going to talk because she’s doing a lot of the work around skill clustering.   

But how do we start to understand the DNA of skills so we can support our whānau to be, ah, adapting to changes in our economy and thriving and prospering. And again, having more of a strength-based approach as opposed to a qualification as the ticket in terms of entry. 

 
 [Slide shows Ngāi Tahu Future Skills Strategy Takiwā Opportunity Overview. The slide shows targets of +6000 Māori in high skilled jobs and a projected net gain of +21000 highly skilled people by 2026. The goal is a net gain in priority, high-growth sectors and high-skill occupations by 2026. The slide lists the top industries, occupations, specialist skills and transferable skills to be targeted. The goal is to increase participation in business and marketing occupations by 4,900 people, health by 4,200, design, engineering and science by 2200, education by 2100 and technology by 1800 people. Examples of occupations and skills related to these industries are listed on this slide]

I’ll probably just say there, that has quite significant implications again for our tertiary sector as well as our compulsory sector. That rather than training our kids for that idea of a profession they’ll have for life, to be equipping them with transferable skills. Which in many ways, when we think about our Māori values whanaugatanga, these are the skills that are already most valued in our labour market today.   
 

We kind of have different words for them, like teamwork and collaborative problem-solving, but what we are seeing already is a depreciation of technical skills and an appreciation of human skills. So we shouldn’t be so worried about, you know, the future is robots taking our jobs, what we’ve got to be telling our kids is that the future is human.  
 

That yes, automation, AI and technology will augment lots of those manual, repetitive roles but there are things that robots and AI just can’t do. In particular, dealing with the complexity of humans.  

So just a last piece here, um, yeah this was just by the numbers, so when we talk about things like equity, we just sort of said, like well rather than just focusing purely on just job growth alone, why don’t we think about jobs for the future.   

So our definition, where jobs that pay over $50,000, uh, not a huge amount, but something at least as a base range can help support a whānau. Ah, jobs that offer opportunities for progression, jobs that are in growth, and jobs that are insulated from changes to the future of work.  

And to me, that’s really like an equity lens, we are already concentrated in areas where we are vulnerable to economic harm, and we need to start thinking around, how do we build pathways to areas where we are recession-proofed? Where we build some immunity to the next recession.   

And you can sort of see the business, HR, that’s the number there is the additional jobs within our takiwā in the next five years. Health, design, engineering and science, education and technology.  

So really, the work Hinepounamu is doing, you know, our Māori Pasifika people, we are concentrated and over-represented in areas where we are vulnerable to future change. In particular, construction, primary sector, retail, hospitality.   
 

But we are incredibly under-represented in areas which are experiencing the highest growth in STEM and ICT. And really, that future skills strategy, for us, is kind of that little pink bridge that will get us over that river. That’s the pathway to go: well if we can be targeting our investment, our energy, and our efforts towards those high-value places where our people can thrive, that’s going to help advance equity for our people.   

Versus if we keep doing what we’re doing, which is actually amplifying our risks to future change.    

That can all be a bit overwhelming, I’ll bet. And yeah again, these aren’t issues that are unique to Aotearoa. Uh, we’ve seen the prospect of growing inequality globally, uh the Black Lives Matter movement, but what’s unique to us as Aotearoa is this unique superpower, our ace card no one else has, which is Te Tiriti partnership. 

 
 [Slide shows a graphic of a tane surrounded by speech bubbles. It's titled Theory of change. The speech bubbles say: Before Europeans, Māori had created balance with the land and our ways adequately sustained us, our ways worked for us and Papatūānuku, colonisation brought technology but disconnected us from ways that worked and imbalanced our environment. Inequality is a global problem but in Aotearoa we have advantage of Te Tiriti. If we honour it, and culturally retool our institutions we will improve our economy for all.  If we don't we will keep pouring unnecessary into welfare, health and prisons. We can forge together the best of both worlds and build back better.

And the thing around what can we do that no one else can do on the planet, and that’s really how we can sort of build those Te Tiriti pathways towards that equitable future.   

 
 [Slide title is A Call to Action! It says that achieving the desired future will only be possible through genuine, authentic, Te Tiriti partnerships. We want industry to work on developing genuine partnerships that acknowledge Māori as Māori, designing innovative employment and training experiences for Māori and developing career progression for Māori. We want schools to work on removing biased systems like streaming, get 400 more Māori with NCEA and UE each year and develop lessons on the future of work for rangatahi.  We want the higher education sector to provide culturally responsive learning experiences, fix skill gaps in training and work with schools to get more Māori into higher education.]

As I said, one foot on the hui waka and the other foot on the do-ey waka, part think-tank, part do-tank. Yeah, a lot of our stuff is around, well, what are actionable changes? And we’ve heard the conversation this morning around streaming, which I kind of lead into, but even just thinking with employers, how do we migrate away from a culture where instantly we hire for the fattest CV, that we hire for a degree.  
 

I was one of the kids that grew up in a whānau where both my parents had teachers, so I was pretty rare among my mates. I wasn’t the smartest one but I kind of had that privilege, went to university and got my degree at, I think, 22.  
 

Now, it’s such a silly idea to think that I haven’t learnt since that, or someone could judge my capability and skills based around a certificate I got, somehow managed to get, while doing a lot of nightclubbing, um, at the age of 22! And that I haven’t grown in knowledge, skills, and experience as a human since then.  
 

But these are those cultural traits that actually sustain and perpetuate these inequities. If we have inequities in education, and even just the simple thing of hiring for a degree, and the degree being the ticket into higher-skilled, higher-paid, higher-security jobs, we are maintaining that inequity.  

 
 [Slide says ending streaming in Aotearoa. It has a photo of Harmony Te Raki-King with a quote from her. The quote says: Streaming can be the cause of low self-esteem.]

Now for the easy one. So we actually started on a piece of work a couple of years ago, with a very sophisticated research methodology I thought of, based around the board game Snakes and Ladders. Where we sort of said: well, when we talk about systems, we don’t really have a good idea of what the hell is going on.  
 

So we kind of like to map the flow of our rangatahi through our education system into their early careers, and try to figure out, well what are the ladders that boost their success and what are the snakes that hold our people back?  

And someone actually managed to translate that into something that was workable, and we did a project where we just kind of mapped that awa that our rangatahi flow through. And just one example of probably about eight or nine significant things we spotted was this importance of MCAT 1.  
 

And I’m assuming you people know what that is, but just that maths, that Māori who achieve that MCAT 1 were three to four times more likely to get NCEA level 3, University Entrance, move on to degree and succeed in attaining their degree.   

 

So we call that a booster, and we were really interested in that. What we found interesting were just the low numbers of Māori, so it wasn’t that Māori weren’t failing MCAT 1, it’s that Māori weren’t even sitting MCAT 1.  
 

And that kind of opened up a bit of a question mark, and again, data is useful to a point, kind of as a diagnostic tool to figure out well what’s working, what’s not and needs to change. But talking to humans is way more interesting and useful.  
 

So we started parachuting a bunch of our rangatahi and researchers, and we encountered this one group of rangatahi that had sort of formed their own little union because they’d all been put into ‘cabbage maths’ or foundation maths.   
 

And I don’t like using that term cabbage maths, but what we started to build a picture of, from their perspective, was the sort of mental health toll of the practice of streaming. And they use Māori to describe it so they called it kapeti, you know, which is Māori for cabbage. They said well, if they said cabbage, the teachers got upset. 
 

But they were furious that they’d all been streamed into the foundation maths. So we started to do more and more work with rangatahi voice, understanding what was going on, we started doing more and more work with maths and science teachers and kind of building an army of champions around this area and trying to understand the complexity of that issue.  

 
 [Slide shows a graphic of a mother and son holding slices of pie. It says: Who gets the slice of opportunities? A third of Māori are missing out.]

And that was last year, and since then we’ve worked with four kura, uh, to actually track their journey of actually de-streaming. I’m actually building case studies around their lived experience as educators within a kura to go well, what worked, what didn’t, what were the boosters and what were the barriers? And that was released, I think, about a fortnight ago. 
 

So ending streaming in Aotearoa. Just that similar thing, again uh, a third of our rangatahi Māori aren’t in a full-time maths, English, or science programme by Year 11, and 40 per cent of our rangatahi Māori go straight into foundation maths in Year 9.  
 

So just that whole idea that when we talk about things like, you know, the practice of streaming we’re based around the perception of the teacher around their ability, people are grouped and streamed. And to go, well, we talk about that in terms of the idea of rangatiratanga, to go that it’s not around them determining their own futures and trajectories and pathways, that others are actually breaching that rangatiratanga, making decisions and constraining those pathways.   

 
 [Slide shows a bar chart. The title is: Appendices, Year 11 students engaged in full NCEA Level 1 courses, 2019. The chart represents percentage of cohort in Maths, English and Science for Māori, Pasifika and Pākehā students. Around 68% of Māori, 78% of Pasifika and 81% of Pākehā did Maths. Around 65% of Māori, 75% of Pasifika and 84% of Pākehā did English. Around 61% of Māori, 68% of Pasifika and 72% of Pākehā did Science.
 

And the key thing we learnt from the first piece of work was that those trajectories and those lifetime learning opportunities and vulnerability in the workforce, yeah a lot of that comes back to these initial experiences in our compulsory education system.  
 

And for those that like numbers and not cartoons, that’s just a little picture in terms of the data. But even seeing some of the stuff we haven’t published, but some of that [unknown] kind of work where you can see that actually, ability has very little to do with how people are streamed, it’s more perception and behaviour. 

 

 [Slide shows a tane and wahine on a seesaw. The tane student is down on the ground. The wahine student is up high, in a position where she can pick apples off a tree. The tree is called the tree of opportunity. The seesaw is called streaming and the message on it says it creates haves and have nots.]
 

And so this idea that it’s somehow… you know, you hear that even from the tauira and even from some of the kaiako that Māori are bad at maths and good with their hands. Well, if we’re telling our kids that we don’t believe in their ability and that Māori are not good at maths, that’s going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy because people will be disengaging from their learning. 
 

And I think again, kind of starting off with an equitable future and a conversation around what that could look like and how we could get there, that’s that kind of Hawaiki hou, that’s the new Hawaiki we want to get to, but we’re just starting off on launching our waka and we have to acknowledge that there are things stopping our waka from moving to that new Hawaiki. 

 

Yeah that we cannot have a conversation about an equitable future without also talking about what are the things in our present that are inequitable that are holding it in place. Is it just that simple thing of streaming, not thinking about just racism as a person or a racist person but thinking about a racist practice.   

To go: streaming is a racist practice and inequity isn’t an oopsie daisy, it’s not an accident or something that happens by fluke. That there are systems and structures but there are also practices that hold it in place. And that when we continue these behaviours, these concrete practices, despite the evidence, that we are not setting up an equal platform, that we are advantaging some and disadvantaging a disproportionate number of our Māori Pasifika youth and impinging on their rangatiratanga-- their rights to be self-determining and choosing their own future.  

 
 [Slide shows graphics and is called what tauira Māori want. It lists the wants: pronounce our names properly, ask us about our whānau, we want to see our culture on the walls, we want to see our culture in the curriculum, have high expectations of us, don't confuse skin colour with identity.]

And some of that, just that whole thing of that rangatahi voice and go: what do rangatahi Māori want, you know, what does culturally responsive practice look like for them? And it’s not rocket science, you know. Say our names properly, um, ask about our whānau, seeing our culture on the walls, we want to see our culture in the curriculum, having high expectations of us.  

Really interesting one, probably good for us Ngāi Tahu ones in the room, uh, you know, don’t confuse culture with skin colour. You know, a lot of our darker skinned whanaunga that haven’t grown up on the pa, not feeling that confident and having that expectation that they should know everything.  

 [Slide shows two hands grasping each other's wrists. One hand says no streaming, the other hand says culturally responsive teachers.]
 

Versus, particularly in Hana and my case, you know, some of our younger, fairer skinned pā kids that have grown up in their Māori communities, that are steeped in our traditions, and everyone assuming they’re ignorant just because they’ve got blonde hair and blue eyes, which is pretty much 90% of our tribe!  

Again, um, the conversation around unconscious bias. I hate that term, and there’s actually a lot of emerging research that shows that it’s not unconscious, it’s just sneaky. And uh, yeah in the 1980s we talked racial prejudice, why can’t we just use those terms? 
 

To try and start to water things down out of empathy and aroha for those that are sustaining racist practices versus well where’s our empathy and aroha for those that are victims of those practices. And just this simple thing with streaming, we found that even eradication of streaming or de-streaming on its own isn’t enough.  
 

That it has to be [unknown] with culturally responsive practice and the two go hand in hand together. And that’s where we saw the real boost in outcomes in terms of the data, but in particular, in terms of that whanaungatanga.

And you know, streaming is kind of like educational apartheid. We kind of have all of our young brown kids in a foundation class and mostly most of our Asian kids and a few Pakeha in the extension classes. What we also saw from the case studies that we released, was that it wasn’t just about Māori Pasifika outcomes going through the roof, but it was also around the social and ethnic divides that were broken down.  
 

Where even the benefits for those that were in those extension classes from just having that whanaungatanga. And that’s a really strong theme that all of those educators commented on in the case studies.  

 [Slide shows a graphic called What can you do to eliminate bias at school? The graphic has one wheel which describes the school bias factory and another wheel that describes mana enhancing schools. The school bias factory has kids streamed, low expectation from teachers, students losing self-esteem, lack of resources and positive stories about Māori success. The mana enhancing wheel has teachers focusing on restoring mana, bringing whānau into the picture, high expectations, non-streamed classes and learning teams.]
 

This isn’t about weaponsing or attacking teachers, and a lot of what we tried to do was about understanding those constraints and sort of systemic wiring. You know so what we build a picture of is even those that were brave but then having the parents of um, of those extension class Pakeha students that really liked the fact that their kid was in the top stream.  
 

You know, school leaders committing to change and then really getting pressure from the boards of trustees when those affluent families started to threaten to bust their kids to another school. So we really started to understand a picture of those complexities and it’s not simple. 
 

And again, we kind of thought well, wouldn’t it be interesting to try and lean on the Minister and kind of like corporal punishment, you know, release an edict and it would all go away and that would be fantastic. And what we started to build a picture on, was that this is a cultural practice, it’s really ingrained, embedded.  

You know, the Minister has described it as ‘abhorrent, archaic, and racist’ and so has Iona Holsted, the Secretary of Education, but it is embedded, and it’s not just something we can simply legislate. That’s one piece of the puzzle.  
 

But even a lot of the teachers talked about PLD, you know, you get one day off to go and do some culturally responsive training. You never have any time to unpack those learnings, redesign and reset and embed them in the classroom.  
 

And so we’ve built a bit of a better and more robust picture around not just what’s happening in the kura, but what are those systemic levers that sit behind that that can either enable teachers to destream and move towards something better, or sustain it in place.  

 [Slide shows a graphic of an iceberg and a whale. The title is: What's below the surface? At the bottom of the iceberg is an arrow that shows inequity 2021 pointing towards equity 2040. Below the water is treaty partnership, culturally responsive practice, pedagogy, restorative practice. Streaming sits on the surface of the water.] 

Um, what do I like about streaming? And again, coming back to that having a conversation around an equitable future requires, well, having that vision, has to also be anchored in the realities and truths of our inequitable present.  
 

And sometimes, when we think about treaty partnership and equity for Māori, it can just seem so big and messy and complicated. I always describe it like a swamp issue, all these vines that are entangled, you don’t know which vine to pull first to try and untangle that mess.  
 

The thing about streaming is it is a concrete, controllable, human practice. You know, it is something that is concrete, we can touch it, that we understand, because our whānau one way or another have experienced the negative impacts of streaming. But also, that it’s something that is controllable, and therefore changeable.  
 

So I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have the broader discussion around equitable futures around Te Tiriti partnership and how we get there, but really, it’s a good first step. To go: well, this is something that we know what the answer is. And the case studies give us some really good insights into the learnings and experience of those that have been on that journey.  
 

And by no means are we underestimating the complexity of what it would take. But as a concrete example of a racially discriminatory practice in Aotearoa, it’s something that is totally solvable. And that is something that we are really committed to progressing. 

 [Slide title is Call to Action. We want all rangatahi to be inspired by their futures. Streaming is a barrier to this vision, and it needs to end. This is about us as a nation and what we value. It is about being fair. This is our invitation to you, to come on board the waka and embark on a journey with us. 

Educations can sign the petition at actionstations.org.nz, stop streaming by choosing to adopt a better way where the focus is on scaffolding students to greater achievement and choose to lead by example. Ekea te waka. Hoea!] 
 

We’ve got a petition at actionstation.org.nz to end streaming. If you tautoko that, feel free to have a look. We have our report, and I’ll leave a couple down here soon. Ending Streaming in Aotearoa, that’s available online at our website, Māorifutures.co.nz.  
 

And hei whakakapi i taku korero, I’m not a good singer, and so I’d like to play a waiata. Part of what we’ve been doing is trying to think about well, how do you visualise what’s invisible? How do you make something that’s kind of sneaky and hard to put your finger on visible so that we can tackle that in really concrete ways.   
 

Research reports are really great for people like you and I. My nephews and nieces, they don’t read research reports, even if they do have nice, pretty cartoons. And so we worked with Young Sid, the rapper, and said: well, how do we start to experiment with ways in which we not only visualise systems, their complexity, and try to think about well how do we visualise racism and what anti-racism could look like? That thing of visioning.  
 

But also really neat to think about, how do we engage with our artists? As Māori, we have a proud legacy, mostly reggae, of protest movement, you know, protest songs, and so we started to talk with a whole bunch of our more contemporary hip-hop artists.  
 

And what was fascinating for me was that it wasn’t a hard concept to sell. You think, oh we want to do a song about the complexities of structural racism in Aotearoa, and everyone was sort of like, oh [questioning], you know, sort of like streaming, and they’re like: oh! That happened to me, I was told to go to the factory.  

So all of the artists had experienced that, their families had experienced that, they had lived experience of it, and so they were able to run with it. And I’ll just put some provisos, um, you’re not quite the target demographic for the waiata [audience laughs].  
 

You know, it’s about rangatiratanga. So we asked our artists to express their rangatiratanga, and to ask the rangatiratanga to be stimulating that in our young people. And so last Friday, Young Sid released a lyric vid on YouTube, and you can download it on YouTube and Spotify, and that will be our waiata.  
 

[Young Sig song plays]  
 

I’m just really glad none of us got us to dance, kind of ruin the coolness of the video. I’m 43, I’m not in that rangatahi zone anymore. Just for me, it was really beautiful to see what our artists can bring to a really serious kaupapa. And mihi ki aia I think to both a cutting commentary on an issue but one that was really intelligent and with great intent to inspire our rangatahi, so kia ora tātou. [Audience applause]  
 

Dr Eruera, we now have perhaps an opportunity for one question. One question that has been asked by the audience. Can we get the NCEA one? 

 Great, so this question has come through Eruera and it’s about, perhaps you’d like to provide some comment, and it is:  
 

How do we change the perception that success is connected to an NCEA qualification? We need to start looking at a wider definition of success. What’s good for Māori, and I’ll say Pasifika, will be good for all. Did you want to provide some comments? 

 
 [Slides say Equity in Stem Symposium, enabling Māori and Pasifika success]

That’s tricky, um, probably, I think that’s something I don’t know a lot about. I think the thing that we are focused on, is trying to understand the transferability of skills and starting to build a narrative from a matauranga Māori lens that’s positive around the future.  
 

One of the key pieces we did was interviewing a lot of rangatahi around their perceptions of the future. Really interesting, the impact of climate change and Greta Thunburg and creating this idea that the planet’s going to be dead in 12 years, which was a pattern we picked up. So I suppose, part of it is how do we inspire our people around the future?  
 

And rather than create this narrative of fear, how do we then start to look at a strength-based narrative? So for our part, we’re looking at the skills piece and starting to move ourselves from an idea of qualifications to start to think around skills, which is more strength-based; everyone has skills. And how do we start to build our own narrative around our own houses of learning, around kete that we can start to take forward with us, rather than the idea of a job for life that might eventually lead you down the wrong path.  
 

So I’ll dodge the NCEA one because that’s another piece that we’re not looking at but I acknowledge that it’s a real piece of the puzzle. Me and [unclear] we work really well together, we’re whanaunga. 
 

But also too for our part, we have a contribution but we also have limitations. And I think that’s where we rely on our education partners to really be the ones ngā mate huri huri tu manu karere . Yeah, we can do some of the thinking, some of the experimentation, but really relying on those that are really well researched educators in that space to do the whakatinana and to be rolling that stuff out.   

Next gen solutions video (43.07 mins)

Dr Eruera Tarena presents on how we build a community of changemakers to help our rangatahi get ready for their future. He outlines barriers and opportunities to equity by improving the skills of our rangatahi.

Panel gives speeches on improving Māori and Pacific success in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) at the 2021 symposium.
Georgia Whitta, Arihia Stirling, Dr Te Taka Keegan, Misa Tovia Va'aelua and Dr Hana O'Regan talk about their experience, barriers and suggestions.

Video transcript

[Screen shows a powerpoint slide of the names of 6 speakers on the left: Georgia Whitta, Arihia Stirling, Dr Te Taka Keegan, Misa Tovia Va’aelua, Dr Hana O’Regan. Right side of screen shows a stage with the 5 speakers seated, and the host speaking into the podium microphone]

[Slide shows NZQA logo: Qualify for the future world, Kia noho takatū ki tō āmua aoi]

[Voice of male host]

Of Cook Island Māori descent, raised in Palmerston North, Georgia is a proud Amanaki STEM Academy alumni. Georgia is a keen advocate for Māori and Pasifika students and is a staff ambassador for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

Georgia is in her fourth year of medical school and is currently on placement with Middlemore Hospital.

Georgia: From a student's perspective, what have been the main challenges of your journey and what would your key advice be for schools, education providers to assist with those challenges?

[Georgia stands up and addresses the audience]

Kia or ngā koutou katoatoa. Ko Georgia Whitta toku ingoa. Ko Arorangi ki te ori. Ko Rarotonga ahau.  Ko Robert Kai Stephens  toku papa, ko Charlotte Susan me te toku mama. Hello, everyone. My name is Georgia and here today I am talking to you about what we can do better for our Māori and Pasifika students.

I was raised in Palmerston North and attended Palmerston Girls’ High School and now I have moved on into working with NZQA, the USER program and with MAPAS program to provide equity for our students.

My overarching concept that I'm going to be talking to you guys about today is that we cannot expect mass Māori and Pasifika STEM success if we keep our students in an environment that has always them.

The oppressive environments being not micro-aggressions but macro aggressions, racism and the Westernized schooling system. I'm going to break down this idea into three areas individual, schooling and systemic change that we can do at the level of the individual.

I had a very interesting experience at my high school. I was told that it was unlikely that I was going to be a doctor. At my Pacifica graduation, my deans decided to bring up my detentions before they brought up my successes.

I always received surprise from teachers when I achieved a high grade in STEM subjects. I was told I couldn't take Māori over English at level three.

 I wasn't allowed to speak te reō Māori in class and, I was told by a peer of mine, a friend, that it was “really great to see some colour up on stage for once” at my prize giving.

What I want to say is an individual teachers and tertiary providers is that you should never, ever have low expectations of us as Māori and Pasifika students.

We built waka, we navigated seas, we created traditional medicine, and we were climate action warriors before Greta Thunberg. Don't assume that all Māori and P.I. students are the same and, just on basic levels, don't be racist.

Sounds pretty simple, but it comes across every day in classrooms. At the school level, my school operated as just as many schools in New Zealand do.

You have a teacher standing at the front talking to students and students are expected to take that on and work in silence. But of course, my friends and I, the brown students at the back who are talking, discussing and helping each other, of course we weren't on task.

Of course we weren't talking about covalent bonds and hydrogen atoms.

And so we always got checked up on by our teachers, always coming over to make sure we were on task.

We need to move into an environment where Māori Pasifika students are learning an environment that is good for them, which is facilitating talanoa, allowing us to work in groups and recognizing that sometimes we know how to explain it to others better than the teacher explains it to us.

 And also we've been discussing streaming, and I hate streaming, too. My very, very first  [Papaaw] mother had to force and beg the school to put me into a streamed class at year ten because I wasn't streamed in year nine.

And then also, if the system fails you at year ten in Science, you will put into foundation Science programs which don't let you excel into our advanced Biology, Chemistry and Physics programs.

So if the system fails you in year ten it stunts your growth for years to come. And as we've discussed, it's got vast mental effects on our students at the level of the government.

I can say that my best ever Pacific STEM program at high school was the Amanaki STEM Academy.

The Amanaki STEM Academy was started by myself and some friends who decided on Friday, Saturday nights we would study science at my friend's house and we studied with Milo and breakfast crackers under some very firm guidance from my friend's parents, and that was the best program we ever had because we were allowed to talk freely, mostly freely.

We were allowed to eat food, were allowed to joke, and we were allowed to teach each other. But the responsibility to ensure STEM equity should never be on the shoulders of our brown people.

It shouldn't be on the shoulders of our brown students who are forced to start making these equity changing programs in high school. It should not be on the responsibility of our brown communities.

The government and tertiary providers have far more manpower, resources and money to do this. Schools, I believe, should have compulsory equity achievement programs, programs such as the USER program, which is brown-led brown tutoring.

We would be paying students or community members to come in and tutor our brown students, where we have separated spaces allowing for Māori and Pasifika students to study in an environment that's comfortable for them because the Western schooling environment is not comfortable for us.

The concept of equity can be quite difficult for people to get their head around because it sounds like you're giving more to another group. In medicine if you have someone coming in and a sucker state, you treat the sickest persons first.

That doesn't mean you're going to neglect all your other patients that came in with runny noses and sore feet.It just means that you're not going to give them as much treatment as you have to give the other person.

So equity is often thought of this grand philosophical idea implemented at policies and legislations. But actually equity happens every day with every interaction you have with your students, your offices and your workplaces.

Recognizing that each day you can make a commitment to equity is the biggest thing that we can do to change as individuals.

And as stated before, if you're not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. Let's talk about after.

Meitaki Maata.

[Female Host] Kia ora.

[Audience applause]

[Georgia takes her seat and the male host returns to the podium]

[Male host]

Dr. Te Taka Keegan is an associate professor in computing and Associate Dean Māori for the Division of Health, Engineering, Computing and Science at the University of Waikato. Te Taka has worked on a number of projects involving the Māori language and technology.

These include Māori Niupepa collection, Māori Te Kete Ipurangi, the Microsoft keyboard, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office in Māori, Moodle in Māori, Google web search in Māori and the Māori macroniser.

In 2013 Te Taka was awarded the University of Waikato’s Māori Indigenous Excellence Award for Research in 2017, he was awarded the Prime Minister's Supreme Award for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.

Welcome Te Taka. With your experience and tertiary education, what are the main trends you've seen for acting on Māori and Pasifika and STEM? What practices do you consider foster engagement for Māori and Pacific ākonga in STEM?

[Dr Te Taka stands to talk]

Kia ora tātou, tuatahi, kei te mihi, me kī ki te mana whenua, NZQA, nā koutou i huihui mai tātou i konei mō tēnei kaupapa, otirā ngā kaikōrero, ki mua ki muri, ki muri ki mua. Ngā mana, ngā tapu, tēnā tātou katoa. We're only given 5 minutes to talk so I'm only going to talk for 5 minutes because I like to do what I'm told most of the time.

So I'm going to look at things from a tertiary perspective, from a university perspective. And really I can only speak from the university that I've been at for the last couple of years, and that's Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato.

But the first thing I want to say is, getting our students to university shouldn't really be the goal, for us at the universities.

That's just the beginning. Once we have them at universities and I'm sure as Georgia will know we've got a lot of work to do because there's so many, so much development, so many areas we can take them through.

So yeah, please keep in mind, getting our students to university isn't the goal. It's getting them there and having them prepared to be able to develop and flourish for all the different opportunities and sciences and learnings that they can have there.

So I was asked to talk about two things: what are the trends we have seen and what are some of the practices.

Now there's lots of things I could say, but I thought I'd just mention three things in terms of trends we’ve seen at university, in terms of Māori students, in terms of Pasifika, the numbers are increasing but they're only increasing by a little bit.

We think they need to be increasing by a lot more. We have issues where we don't have enough Māori and Pasifika staff to be able to guide them through and to be able to bring a type of thinking that our students are needing. [Te Taka pauses.]

Okay, so numbers: numbers are increasing, but it’s too slow, we've got an issue with staff.

I actually think traditionally universities are like a bastion of colonialization, of racism. I actually think that's changing quite a lot.

I think the thinking is starting to change. So we need to ensure that those changes actually come into place. Don't just think about it, let's start doing that.

And we look forward to challenges from students, from staff, from Māori internal, external, at universities, to make those challenges real.

One of the trends that we're noticing is these actually like two types of Māori student or two types of Pasifika student.

So there’s those students that come with a deep and rich understanding of, of their background, of their tikanga, of reō, mātauranga, and then we have those students that come who are still Māori and Pasifika but absolutely no understanding.

And it's kind of like it's not like there's one group or the other, it's like a continuum and all of the students are somewhere along the path. So some of the avenues and some of the approaches we have for students down this end [gestures]  don't work for students down this end [gestures to other side].

And I think if we're true to see the seen Māori and Pacific Islanders Island students, what we have to do is encourage that movement along the continuum.

I think if they leave our care at a university and they haven't moved along that continuum, then I think we're kind of failing a little bit on what we should be doing. The other thing I'd like to note and some of the trends is that it's not a level playing field, though the Māori and Pasifika students have more barriers than non-Māori non-Pasifika students.

One of the key ones is the environments. The environment they are coming to at a tertiary institute is a lot more foreign. It's a foreign environment.

There’s a barrier from secondary to tertiary that the students need to overcome. Students quite often, Māori students, Pasifika students of our students have cultural, they have cultural responsibilities.

And the classic example this morning, Hine Pounamu wasn't here because of cultural responsibilities.

We have a lot of students at university that have the same cultural responsibilities and we need to ensure that, our institutes are aware of those, they allow for them, they cater for them, and they don't negatively affect our students.

And then we have this thing called whakamā and whakamā is our issue for a lot of our students at tertiary institutes.

So those are some of the trends we've seen. I have a lot of hope that at tertiary institutes we can address and work towards some of those strengths and some of the practices that I think we should be doing.

So I'm going to there's lots of practices that I think we should be doing, but I'm going to list three.

So the first practice for me is: whakawhanaungatanga.. If we can create opportunities of whakawhanaungatanga. with our students in our tertiary institutes and increases their opportunities to succeed.

And for me, when I see the picture of the flower and the flowers wilting and we've got to look at the, the ground that its growing in, for me that's whanaungatanga.

Whakawhanaungatanga. is that that makes a flower to grow. We are, at Waikato university, we're going to start instigating a program called the Pūhoro STEM program and for me, I see that's the key of the Pūhoro STEM program is the ability to leverage off whakawhanaungatanga. Matehaere ngā tahi ko te atu mahi.

And so that's the first thing. The second thing I think is an important practice is having a good teacher, good teachers are really important.

Everybody who's been through school can remember their best teacher and they really like that subject. And it could be like for me, the suckiest subject of all, but I've got a really good teacher then that makes a huge difference.

So good luck, Arihia, with finding your teacher. Get some good teachers and we'll get good students for me.

For me, I hope you get a good teacher and like computer science because then I’m going to get good computer science students. And I have a little bit of an issue with the STEM name because for me, so Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, for me, the technology doesn't really cut out for my particular field.

So my particular field is Computer Science. And Computer Science is a lot more than just Technology.

And we have the famous Computer Science saying that says “Computer Science is as much about computers as Astronomy is about telescopes.”

So it's when we study computer science, we're not really studying the technology we're studying all the opportunities and benefits that we can get from the technology and, when we look at the students asking what they're going to be, it's very rare for for them to think of computer science and the different levels of opportunities in computer science as a career for them in the future.

And that kind of brings me onto my third point in practices.  So: whanaungatanga, having a really good teacher, and then the third thing I think is really important is being able to spark the passion within the students, because if we can spark that passion, then we can drive them a lot and so some of the things that we look at in particular is “how do we spark a computer science passion?” or

“How do we spark the mathematics passion?” And I think there's a couple of things. There's a whole list of things we can do to spark that.

But like Arihia just mentioned: Making our students realize that we have aspects of computer science in the practices, in the tikanga and now to I think for me personally, I think the way that Maui achieved all his feats wasn't so much as his ability to enhance technology, but his ability to use concepts that are grounded in computer science.

So how can we show our children? How can we show our rangatahi Māori, rangatahi Pacifica that their knowledge base comes from a computer science knowledge base?

That's what I'm going to say anyway, because that's my department. [Audience laughter] So how can we spark the passion?

If we can spark the passion, then those students will be able to overcome the obstacles, and they will get lots of obstacles when they come to university.

And so, so finally, just as leading off, I think as teachers, as teachers at university, as lecturers, as associate professors, at whatever we are, as teachers at universities.

You know, there's a couple of key things we should be able to do, and one of them is to unshackle our students. The second thing is to empower them to go all of the places they want to go, instil tikanga, reō, mātauranga in all of those different areas.

And just get out of the way, get out of the way and let them do it. Maybe watch from the sideline and guide them a little bit.

And then from a university perspective, write your name beside some of the great things that they create so it makes the university look good. So: unshackle our students empower our students and get out of the way.

Kia ora tatou.

[Audience applause]­­

[Host returns to the podium] Tena koe Te Taka. Misa Tovia Va’aelua. As a cultural builder, Pacifica advocate and tech founder.

He's the general manager of Rhipe Australasia and the chairman of Pacifica in I.T. who are a collective of experienced and knowledgeable industry professionals with a passion for I.T. and a heart for Pacific Island community.

He is a proud son of Samoa and Aotearoa and is committed to seeing Pacific communities educated, equipped and employed across all areas of the information technology industry.

Misa Tovia, from your industry experience, what X-factor do you believe Māori and Pacific students bring to STEM industries, and why is this important for Aotearoa?

[Misa stands to address the audience]

All right, all right. Do you know how hard it is for people like me to sit still? Um, okay. So, uh, I think I just want to get something out first.

It was very difficult for me to come up here because, you know, when [Autu Faeselli] showed me the list of the other panelists and it was doctors, an overachiever like Georgia, you know, and then you find yourself sort of sitting there going, there's got to be a way in which I can get out of here.

I couldn't find it. But let me start first by saying I, I, [to self] Uh, how do this? Let's go. [Speaks to audience in Samoan] Man, my Dad would destroy me if he was here. [Continues in Samoan]

Before I answer the question on the X factor for Pacific and Māori, I wanted to you know, it's quite interesting. I thought everyone else going to prepare slides and obviously they didn't.

So forgive me. Yeah, I just want to take a step back and talk about the landscape first, the digital skills report that came out the beginning of this year.

[Slide is titled The technology pipeline and landscape. On the slides are charts that show Māori and Pasifika participation in NCEA Digital Technologies standards are declining. The chart also shows a low rate of Māori and Pasifika in the technology industry.]

We will be doing cutaway reports working with our brother Graeme Muller out of NZ Tech to figure this out. Before I start getting into everything else, I just wanted to raise this so that everyone else can see what the landscape looks like today.

The landscape for the current population today and in the I.T. industry that I'm a part of and have been a part of for the last 22 years, Pacifica is 2.8% and Māori aren’t doing,

In fact, Māori, given that they're tangata whenua are probably doing worse in terms of the representation inside that industry.

If you go back and look at the three years of the next cohort or the next talent that's coming through, you can already start to see here that, yes Māori is 10.5, Pacific is 5.5 and that's an average across both NCEA, the graduate programs and also the degree programs.

It's not looking good in the next three years. And then if you go back further to secondary school, you can see there that we're at 23% in Māori, 9% in Pasifika and it's still it looks like it's improving, but it's not because if you look at the declining participation in see a digital technology standards, you can see that Māori and Pacific participation is declining as well.

 So, the reason why I want to see that landscape or set the scene is so that you understand for people like me who are in the industry and have been industry for two decades, it's tough because there's not that many people like me.

Well, if I think if I think about my background. So I was meant to be a teacher, but then realized that you have to actually be passionate about children.

So I decided not to do that. And you'll, you'll probably thank me for it. And then I got into technology. I started off for telecom, moved to Datacom. I, I worked for Microsoft, the average tenure in Microsoft 3.4 years. I did 15.

So, you know, that whole it was like Survivor, you know, outwit, outplay but for me it was outrun because of my dad, you know. But everything that I've ever gotten involved in around technology has always been about community.

[Slide shows Ideation, Innovation, Necessity. Ideation is new products and markets. Necessity is better quality of life]

So you ask the question, what is the X Factor? And the X Factor is really simple. You look at innovation. There are two types of innovation that exist. There is innovation by ideation and innovation by necessity.

The innovation that you do when you have a great idea is amazing because you get to come up with new stuff and you get to come up with stuff where you create new products and new markets.

But the innovation that you come up with, when you have, I wouldn't say nothing, when you have very little, is amazing, even more amazing. But the outcome of that innovation by necessity is just a better quality of life.

[Slide is titled Skills half life. There are examples of driving skills half life. There is an image of a horse and cart with the caption, 1800s, 3,800 years. There is a taxi cab with the caption, 1900s, 100 years, there is a man driving a car holding a cellphone with the caption, 2000s, 5 years]

And so I look back on my own, my career and whilst I don't attest to be anything near what my fellow panelists have, I've been privileged to be to have led the team that deployed the first I.C.O. or Initial Coin Offering around cryptocurrency to a Southeast Asian community which was to help them to actually because they couldn't bank because they didn't have a fixed address that was recognized by the bank.

And this is 2.5 million people, quite a small community in Southeast Asia, but we helped them to actually be able to trade with each other using cryptocurrency for the first time.

That was surrounded by community, then I was part of the team that deployed TV white spaces, which takes TV channel bandwidth and converts it to 8 meg broadband because we knew that where wi-fi and cable didn't reach we knew that TV signal could.

And so we did that because again, we were looking at community.

And you know, when you're growing up in the Samoan family and your dad's chasing you around the neighbourhood and you're dodging cars and all sorts of things, the one thing you learn is that you need community people that will help you and hide you.

And, and so that that was built into me. And so every project that I've ever done, all the startups that I have on the go today are all, they are all around community to try and create a better quality of life for people.

But the urgency around getting our people, our students are our Māori and Pacific people into children, our rangatahi  going into, into tech is, is, is more urgent than you think.

Some of you may already be familiar with the skills half-life, I’ve used the example here you can see it in the learning in the digital age from Deloitte, and it talks about if you were a horse and cart horse and carriage driver your family, you would have come from a family of horse and carriage drivers.

That would have been your, you know, your mainstay for decades, even, you know, potentially millennia.

And then you come to a taxi driving and that will probably last you maybe a century at best. If you're an Uber driver, you have the better part of five years left. The skills that you're acquiring today, the half-life of those in which half of it will become irrelevant, is getting smaller and smaller. It's gone down to five years.  

Why? Because automated self-driving vehicles will put all these drivers out of business.

And this is why the urgency around getting our kids into the tech industry is important and it's important also because they are in our backyard and they understand necessity. They understand what it means when we understand what it means when we don't have, you know, enough. And we're only just trying to make ends meet and we're looking for a better quality of life.

And so the urgency is important for us to encourage our kids, because I'm still sitting there, in that and that industry looking out for them, waiting for them to arrive.

If you look at professional service skills half lives, this becomes a more interesting aspect because then you can see right from if you're in the 1960s, whatever skill you acquired, you know, you had that that was good for 30 years and 30 years time, your skills would be half as useful.

[Slide is titled Industrial Revolution (IR) Skills Half-Life. A chart shows a fast decline for professional service skills half-life.  It starts from the 1960s with a half-life of 30 years, then down to 1980s with 20 years, then to 2000s with 7 years and finally at 2020 with 4 years]

We're now sitting it, you know, around five years and it's dropping. There are even some research or reports that are saying that the half skill half life of a skill is now down to three years.

The urgency of being able to get people in because of the digital age and actually helping to automate a lot of these things.

And it's not automation that's destroying or removing the jobs. Automation, creating clarity so that our people aren't doing the tedious jobs that they're doing today, and we can upskill them and reskill them.

This is not an indictment on education, not an indictment on anyone, because if there is ever a guilty party around education and lifelong education, it's us in the industry.

We have an expectation that NZQA and all of the schools will do the education. When you get to the work and get into the industry, you don't need to learn anymore. when in actual fact lifelong learning is a necessity now.

Learning and development is critical through the digital tools that are available. This is critical for all of our learners who come and whether they Pasifika, Māori or otherwise.

And so it's important for us to understand the urgency has become more and more apparent. And a lot of people have been talking about in the Industrial Revolution three, the introduction of the of the logical processor, of the PC and Industrial Revolution four, which was the introduction of digital, the key change point in Industrial Revolution four was the Internet.

No one's talking about Industrial Revolution five, but you need to understand why Industrial Revolution five is important, because Industrial Revolution five is the humanization of the computer.

And so if you look at what Māori and Pacifica bring, we bring humanity. You know, we have community. We understand community because this is what this is built into us.

[Slide shows robot hand pointing at the audience with the words industrial revolution 5.0]

And so as we move into this new industrial revolution, we're looking for those kids to come to help us to put that humanity back into the automation of robotics.

And we're still waiting. So if you're asking if the question is and the question is, what is the X factor? The X factor is I think my sister said it before, we were doing these things long before Greta came along.

We're doing these things long before people started calling it the fancy names that they are. We just do community.

And so if there's anything that I can do to help you or if anyone wants to buy me a coffee after, then you're more than welcome to sort of just come and tap me in and drag me out. Malo le soifua.

[Audience applause and Misa resumes his seat on the stage]

31:48

[Male host returns to the podium and speaks]

Dr. Hana O’Regan is the chief executive CORE Education and has worked in the areas of language, revitalization, identity and cultural development te reō Māori in education for over 25 years. Hana is a published author and composer and is recognized internationally for work in indigenous language acquisition and revitalization. A graduate of Te Panekiretanga Institute of Excellence in te reō Māori Hana is widely respected for Māori language contributions skills and advocacy.

 

Hana's passion for education and community history and equity has resulted in a career committed to working with organizations, businesses and individuals to support and enhance positive outcomes for learners and whānau. From your vast experience, Hana, what role would iwi communities or what role could iwi communities play in raising achievement STEM?

32:59

Kia ora. Ko taku tuatahi tāku ki a koe e te kaiwhakarite, e te tukāne Lee, nāu i para te huarahi ki te wāhi karo i te ata nei, nā reira, e toro atu ana kā mihi ki a koe, heoi anō, ki kā takata whenua o te rohe nei, Te Ātiawa me ō hoa iwi e noho ana ki tō koutou taha arā, Ngāti Raukawa tērā, ko Kāti Toa tērā, nei rā te mihi atu o Aoraki mauka  ki kā mauka whakahī, tae atu ki kā mauka katoa, e whakakanohi nei i tēnei rūma, tēnā tātou.

Kia ora everybody. And I said Hi to your mountains too. No matter where they are from, ko ka whanau ka o te maunga nui a kiwa. To my Pacific whanau ka relations, tenei koutou me koutou te huka Kaiako ko whakaraka tera nei,  i te kaupapa i tenei ra, tenei tatou, so to our Pacific relations  but also to the many teachers, no matter where you come from in this land, our mountains greet each other on this Kaupapa and has been mentioned, during the school holidays. So nei ra te mihi tenei koutou.

Ok Lhi, my 5 minutes starts now! So I've been asked around the perspectives of iwi and what role iwi and communities have to address this challenge that we have in front of us.

 

And I guess the first thing, it's really hard when you've been standing up and you've had Andrew Beecroft, and you've had Glennis and you've had Arihia, and you've had this panel of amazing speakers here to then be given 5 minutes to speak from an iwi perspective. But what I will say is that perhaps, perhaps the key word would be kia manawa titi tatou, kia manawanui tātou” we that we have to have the perseverance of the titi, the mutton bird titi, actually half of my rellies down south.

 

are out on the Mutton Bird islands now, collecting the titi. In a sustainable practice, by the way, the reason we use this term; Te Manu Tītī, is because a tītī will fight to the end of the earth to do what it needs to do and come back and look after its young we might eat the young at that point, but this behind there's not this kaupapa today, and we need to have this kind of perseverance.

 

We need to have this kind of strength to deal with the challenges that are in front of us. We need to do it as iwi, but we also need to do it within whānau because whilst I've heard things today and, all positive intent as well, things like “We need to encourage our children to see the benefit of STEM within Māori and Pasifika.”

“We need to ignite that passion.” I absolutely agree with that. But there's a bigger challenge and that challenges is that the system that we work within does inevitably, and has done now for generations, create barriers to that success. It's not that our children don't see the success, the benefits of STEM. Of course they see it. They're not dumb. And for us to think for a moment that they don't see that the ones who actually succeed within those qualifications and go on in terms of in terms of those roles and those professions, they are the ones who can provide sustainable environments for their whanau, who can feed their whānau, who can look after their whānau. They see that. It's not that they don't see the value in it. It's that we're not doing enough to create the opportunities that enable their success within it. It's not the fault of our children, and it's also not just the fault of one part in the community.

It's not just the fault of the teachers. It's not just the fault of the education system, of the ministries that set the policies. It's not just the fault of the iwi. We are all actually a product of the system and we need to dig deep and be brave enough to realize that we have now had generations who have been subjected to a way of thinking about learners and about certain people within our community that perpetuates the negative statistics that you've seen today.

 

It perpetuates those inequities. It was designed to create the inequities. Streaming, as my brother Eruera, has said, was designed to create a class system. We need to be brave enough to step back and say, “Actually, what are the other areas? What are the other rules, the other practices, the other policies that we have that we experience every day that also perpetuate those same inequities?”

 

And we have to be brave because it's so big. It's everywhere. And if you're not one of the people in our community; that 10% or that 30% that Judge Beecroft referred to that sees these inequities on a daily basis, you can almost be forgiven for not realizing that they are there and not seeing our role in perpetuating them. So I have to say to my iwi, our iwi, I have to say to my whānau: We also need to do something around changing the expectations that we have also started to take on, because we've also been a product of an inter-generational system.

We have to have a kind of resilience which is almost terrifying because of how big it is. My brother Eruera showed a picture of Matiaha Tiramōrehuan image of him 1848. He comes from my marae. At Moeraki we teach our children about that man who was a scientist, who was an incredible author, a writer, an educator, seven generations.

It had took from the time that he protested around the inequities and challenged people for the brown skin be made just equal with the white skin before we achieved settlement. That takes a lot of perseverance to think not only for the generation now, but actually for the generations in the future. That's why I say for the role of our iwi is to not give up.

We're at a point now that we have an ability to change a system and change our practices, address racism in a way that we haven't yet in our country. The first thing we need to do is acknowledge that that knowledge, not just around numbers and figures, but acknowledge that that impacts the lives and the dispositions of the learners that we have in front of us.

It's really easy to disassociate ourselves from the personal impact on an individual when we look at figures. Iwi need to dig deep and also find the strength within them to engage with some of the same schools in the same communities that have created those inequities and being the been the cause of them in the past. And we need to do it because not one group of us will be able to do it alone.

If we do not work with educators to support the change in the mindset that builds up the positive expectation of the Māori and the Pacific learner. It won't work. If we're battling on the door and trying to knock down the door of the NZQA or the Ministry of Education and we're not changing some of the same messages in the home around our expectations of our children, our babies, our mokopuna.

 

It won't work. But working together, the call to action that Eru laid down before us, working together with the coalition of the willing, understanding that teachers aren't inherently bad, understanding that teachers love children [audience laughter] and have chosen a career that invests in the future of those children, and of those communities, because they don't do it for the money. Unlike some professions [audience laughter] understanding that actually some of the messages in the systems that they are working with then they are doing so because that also a product of that system.

 

So we need to be brave enough to challenge, to look with an equity lens at what we're doing and join together with the coalition of the willing. You want to be on this wākā, but we've got to make sure as iwi as whanau, as communities that we're working with, all of those who are who are likewise like minded, committed to this kaupapa.

 

And when we're brave enough to see that inequity lies in front of us, we'll put our hand up and we'll say me mutu e konei. It stops here. And if you're on that waka, we will work with you. If you're not, you don't want to be another wākā. So dig deep, dig deep. And when I think about the challenge that was laid by Judge Beecroft, about vision I was attracted to work in the organization that I'm now working in because of the vision: Equity and learning for all New Zealanders for a thriving Aotearoa.

 

I wanted to be doing some of the do because I've been teaching and speaking for nearly three generations because I started when I was five, three generations, three decades, I should say. And I wanted to do something about it because I've actually failed my own children. I'm a mother of two children who have been raised with Māori language as their first language when it's been lying dormant in my family for over 120 years and I've failed them and I know before my baby boy went to school I spoke to Ero and I said, please, can you put the W in Ero so it becomes Wero so we can do that.

I'm worried as a five year old Māori boy going to school looking like a Māori boy, I know what it's going to be like for him. Please, can you do something about that? And I failed my five year old boy. I failed him because on the first day of school he got taken into the principal's office for being naughty.

Who does that at age five. First of all, the mother in me went “You little….” , but then my heart broke I saw this boy who was so excited about education, who came from a family of educationalists, literally crumble before my eyes. And at the age of six, he told my mother, My Pākeha mother, “When I grow up, I'm going to jail because that's where the bad Māori boys go and only bad Māori boys go to jail.

But I don't care because in jail they give you mashed potato and I like mashed potato.” Six years old. He's telling me I should leave him in the road to die, to get run over because he's naughty. And I'm thinking, I was my qualifications, with the mouth that I have, I cannot protect my own son. And last year and 2020, when my children asked me to change their names on the on the roll at school 2020, and said, “Mum e hari te me ko koe te rau te muru o tahi a ra"

 

You're not there having to deal with this every day. Just change my name from Manuhia to Manu. change my name from Tarotawhi to Taro”. So my vision, my vision on a personal level, not the statistics, is it that my mokopuna won't change their name. My mokopuna won't be like my son in year nine and said “I'm not good at maths and I'm in the dumb class the science because I only went to a decile two school.”

 

What 13 year old knows what a decile two school is? My mokopuna will see that the schools have learned from the models of Māori education, Māori-medium education, the fact that our students in Māori medium education succeed at higher rates across English, Maths, Science than their Māori counterparts in mainstream schools. Why? Because they are being culturally enhanced. They don't have to defend their culture, they don't have to defend their identity, and they succeed across the board.

My children threatened to run away if I sent them to a Māori immersion school.

And they did that because they had been fed the messages that they would be limited if they went there, they wouldn't have the same opportunities if they went somewhere else. So, my mokopuna they're going to say taua, tuku au tenei  kura Māori. They're going to say, “Send me to the schools where I'm culturally supported, where the teachers can say my name, my culture is seen for all that it is” then I won't have failed my grandchildren.

 

Like I failed my children. That's why I say we have to dig deep. When the teacher at year ten said at my parent teacher interviews, “Your son has the worst attitude of a learner that I've ever come across”. You only get 5 minutes. “Does that surprise you?” And I said, “Can we talk about teacher-student relationship?” She said, “Well, he's not succeeding in any of any of this work.”

 

I Said, “Yeah, okay, can we come back to that teacher student relationship? My son thinks you hate him. If he thinks you hate him, it's downhill from here. I'm not worried about my son. My son's got a fantastic mind. I'm not worried about his vocab. I'm not worried about his ability to learn. I'm worried about how he feels as a learner in your class.

 

Can we talk about that?” Last year he walked across the, sorry, This year he walked across the stage  because he got excellence endorsement and in say I live one I felt like doing this to the teacher which is what you do when you've got mittens on and you want to do something else. Why? Because my son has the supports.

 

He can go home to his grandfather, his uncles, his aunties, people who tell him that the myths that you hear in the community, the myths that you hear about being a Māori learner are actually not true. This is the truth. The truth is our narrative. The truth is, our ability, the truth is our X-Factor. The truth is the potential not having to defend that.

 

Once upon a time we were skilled navigators that should be known by everyone in the country. We that's not even the starting point. Not having to defend the culture, not having to defend who they are, but celebrating that creativity, celebrating their innovation, celebrating the way they are as Māori, as Pacifica within our kura and within our communities. So I ask Iwi like I did when a news report came out, the call to action to stop streaming.

I took that kaupapa to iwi chairs. 78 iwi. When we said “This is one of the things that stops, stops the potential, literally crushes the potential of so many of our tamariki in our schools.” And I said, “Will you 78 iwi, get behind this?” They endorsed that. They were brave enough to say, “Yep, even though if we looked at everything, it seems like too big a challenge. Let's take it one step at a time and do something about that when we can.”

So we were able to go to the Ministry of Education and say that 78 iwi agree with the kaupapa of Te Toka Ngā Taraki and come behind the call to action to stop streaming. That's what iwi can do, to not give up the fight, but actually cherish the fact that we are in a time now like no other, where we have teachers who come in their school holidays to discuss the reality that so many have denied for so long.

We need to see the hope in the minds and the hearts of our tamariki that it will change, that it can change. And we need to work together with the coalition of the willing to make it happen. No pressure. You can change it. And when my daughter said to me, “Mama, I want to be a teacher” and every other pāka in the room says “Don't do that. Who would want to be a teacher?” I said to her, “It’s all right, because your brother wants to be a financial business analyst so he can earn our money. You go change the world.”

Kia koutou katoa koutou kei te mura o te ahi To those of you who are doing this every day, join with iwi, join with the communities, help our whanau tell a new narrative of success and then we can do it together. Kia ora koutou katoa.

 

Enabling Māori and Pacific success in STEM video (67 mins)

Panel discussion on improving Māori and Pacific success in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) at the 2021 symposium.
Georgia Whitta, Arihia Stirling, Dr Te Taka Keegan, Misa Tovia Va'aelua and Dr Hana O'Regan talk about their experience, barriers and suggestions.

Equity in STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

00:00:04:11 - 00:00:52:17 

About 20 High school students wearing school uniform perform a waiata in te reo Māori] 

Andy Wood 

[introduction in Māori] My name's Andy Wood, and I'm the previous principal of James Hargest College. So Mason Drury threw down the wero to schools, you know, that if a Māori student spends 12 years in our education system and goes out the other end, not being confident and knowledgeable to move in the world of te ao Māori as well as in the pākehā world then schooling system is has let that child down based on the equal partnership obligations of the treaty. 

 

00:00:54:03 - 00:01:16:01 

Andy Wood 

That's a tough wero but it's one that I found really, really challenging. And for many years, I think a lot of us in leadership had struggled with the question of how to tackle Māori achievement in our schools. And I'd certainly struggled in my previous school to get any kind of traction around that and just to know how to tackle it. 

 

00:01:16:15 - 00:01:57:12 

Andy Wood 

Early in 2010, we became involved in a project called Hei kakano?, which was a Ministry-funded professional learning and development project. And that project helped me to make my kind of implicit beliefs, explicit and held them up to scrutiny. And I realized that for anything to happen, I first had to confront my own personal values and assumptions and, as I say, my own deficit theorizing and decide whether I was okay with the profile of achievement data at James Hargest or not. 

 

00:01:58:02 - 00:02:23:22 

Andy Wood 

And the answer was "r not". And so that led to the engagement of the school and a considerable number of people within the school had to, I guess, embark on a journey of looking at what we believed in and our school practices and whether they were leading to Māori experiencing success as Māori in our schools. 

 

00:02:24:04 - 00:03:19:08 

Andy Wood 

It comes back to that making implicit assumptions, explicit. Making your goals explicit, creating the new understanding of what pedagogies make a difference for Māori learners, and trying to infuse that into all our expectations and systems. And that isn't a oncer. So it's not a teacher only day, it's not a, it's not a sending everybody on a course, that's long and slow work and I think that if we achieved anything, it was that we persevered with it over many years and did it in a way that was continual. And that we kept coming at it from different angles, and kept providing those opportunities for teachers to confront their own beliefs, and their own pedagogies and to think about how to achieve what we were trying to achieve. 

 

00:03:20:02 - 00:03:49:23 

Bryan Forde 

Bryan Forde, Co H.O.D. of Mathematics at James Hargest College. Probably six or eight years ago we started the process of tracking Māori learners. We've continued with it, tracking Māori learners and priority learners and the difference that would make with the pupil would be putting that pupil in the forefront of the teacher's mind and thinking and planning. So that they could then actually plan a deliberate act, of some sort of teaching, or approach, that would suit that learner and to ensure that they succeed. 

 

00:03:50:22 - 00:04:22:23 

Bryan Forde 

Moving forward for how this is going to affect their learners is, I think, knowing Pacific learners will feel more part of the system. We really still are in a system that was invented over a hundred years ago and it hasn't really changed, and our approach to it hasn't really changed. But what we're trying to do is actually change it so that pupils feel that they're actually part of it and that’s probably the main bit, if they feel part of it, they're then going to want to succeed, be able to succeed. 

[change to conference setting] 

00:04:25:20 - 00:04:50:01 

Anna McDowall 

Pretty daunting crowd to follow, you guys, thanks very much. And before lunch, we've got it all going on today. As you saw under the previous leadership of our timuaki Andy Wood Māori achievement was our number one strategic goal in our kura and has been for the last ten years. James Hargest College is a really traditional school in a really conservative community. 

 

00:04:50:04 - 00:05:14:07 

Anna McDowall 

We have 17% Māori in our school and we have worked really hard to make sure that the disparity became non-existent for us at level one achievement data. Level two, we got to a zero disparity as well and level three, we're getting closer. We don't think we're there yet. We are not happy with our Māori and Pacific achievement and attendance in STEM subjects. 

 

00:05:14:18 - 00:05:32:06 

Anna McDowall 

So the goals are ongoing in our school and our place. So I did really try to get out of talking here like nah, we’re like from the bottom of South Island, we've got nothing to share here. And I was convinced that because it's been such a goal of ours and the disparity has improved so much, we do have little offerings to share. 

 

00:05:32:16 - 00:05:50:22 

Anna McDowall 

So I'm just going to talk about the things we've done at our place that have worked for our kids, and there might be something there that might work for yours too. I wanted to look at what we've done through our school, starting at classroom level, then into department level, then into systems level and then into our community, and with our iwi. 

 

00:05:50:22 - 00:06:17:16 

Anna McDowall 

So we really have tried to look at our Māori and Pacific achievement at all of those levels and starting in the classroom because that's the place obviously our Māori kids have to face every day. And a high school setting with five or six different people with different relationships. And I think our number one learning over the last ten years has definitely been that those relationships are absolutely key to any learning that can take place. 

 

00:06:18:02 - 00:06:41:05 

Anna McDowall 

Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care. And I think that that old adage is absolutely true. So we've done a heap of work around what constitutes effective, culturally responsive pedagogy in a classroom, what constitutes letting Māori kids work together and other kids? What constitutes letting those ako relationships flourish? What constitutes understanding where the kids in your classroom come from, first and foremost, what they want to get out of the classroom experience, not what you think they should want to get out of the classroom experience. 

 

00:06:49:05 - 00:07:05:07 

Anna McDowall 

We've had a lot of school wide PLD (Professional Learning Development?) over the last ten years, focused on classroom practice and encouraging teachers to look at their lessons with a cultural lens. Developing teacher agency, and the ability to be self-reflective and engage in conversations with colleagues about how they working using the guiding principles of Manaakitanga, Ako and Mahi Ngatai and their classrooms is ongoing and spirals in efficacy as everything does.  

 

00:07:05:07 - 00:07:43:12 

Anna McDowall 

So beyond the classroom at department level, we've used a lot of really strong research based evidence to evaluate courses and evaluate lessons. We've certainly tried to incorporate a cultural context to the learning across the curriculum. So yes our scientists are using as much local context and maybe indigenous understanding of kai and of those practices, traditional practices, and way of working so that the learning is meaningful and is real. 

 

00:07:43:20 - 00:08:01:09 

Anna McDowall 

We've certainly done that really strongly in the arts, which I know this is not about, but actually it's a passion of mine. So we've used a lot of Māori authors and playwrights and English and drama subjects as well. We've looked at our whole school and said where we can use a local context for this, we are going to do that no matter how much work it takes to get there. 

 

00:08:02:22 - 00:08:42:22 

Anna McDowall 

We've also made some systematic changes to the way that we operate. We've introduced this year  changes in our form classes, so they were be in banded ability levels, this year they are in house based. So we've gone to a non-streamed core class with a separate form teacher and that form teacher relationship has, we've done a lot of PD [Professional Development] around moving from an administration based role to a pastoral role. So the form teacher doesn't teach the junior class, but is there and intended to work with that group of learners for five years through the journey through James Hargest Senior College. 

 

00:08:43:13 - 00:09:15:17 

Anna McDowall 

So that's really exciting, and there was a lot of pushback about that. A lot of teachers felt like if they didn't teach them, they wouldn't get to know them as well. But already one term in, there's a heap of feedback, but because they don't have to have the academic relationship with the learners or concentrate on the learning, they actually feel like they get to know them and get to talk about what's important to them, make great contacts with their whānau and make improvements that they'll see for the next five years that they can really help guide those tamariki through our college to a place that means that they find success for them, whatever that looks like for them. 

 

00:09:15:18 - 00:09:47:19 

Anna McDowall 

We've also introduced [Te committee Māori Ohemaa Haka], headed by Associate Principal Jocelyn Old and she has worked really hard to make stronger community links with our whānau. So we have regular whānau hui, we're actively soliciting whānau voice around what success for their tamariki looks like in our school and our place. We've worked hard to make connections with local iwi and at the mārae and used the voices of our kids to enforce what it is that it means for them to be successful and how we can help them. 

 

00:09:49:03 - 00:10:11:20 

Anna McDowall 

As with any important work, it's not easy and the more you learn, the more you become aware of the things you need to improve. We are continuing to evaluate everything at our kura, we've looked hard at our assemblies, our prizegivings, our academic excellence awards and asked ourself in those ceremonies and in our physical space, how do we see the commitment to the treaty? 

 

00:10:12:08 - 00:10:28:19 

Anna McDowall 

And sometimes we don't like the answers to those questions. And then it's a cause and a stimulus for further work and discussion. I think in one of the original Hei Kakano readings there was a really cool line that said if an alien came to your school, how would they know that we were in Aotearoa New Zealand? 

 

00:10:29:01 - 00:10:54:16 

Anna McDowall 

How would they see a commitment to the treaty in your school? And that's a question we keep asking ourselves ten years on from that initial PLD, and it's a question that sometimes I'm still not proud of the answer and we have to keep working hard. I also think in our place we've been dancing around the idea of how do you ensure the intention is evident when at times the action feels tokenistic? 

 

00:10:54:24 - 00:11:16:02 

Anna McDowall 

And I know that's something I've really battled with as a really strong advocate for our Māori students in our school and someone who's pushed to make a lot of changes, through my previous roles, and in this one currently. How do we make sure that what you see reflects how we feel? And it's not a job that's ever done, I think.  

 

00:11:16:02 - 00:11:43:02 

Anna McDowall 

In summary, at James Hargest College, we have made a genuine commitment to Māori achievement. It's been our number one strategic goal for ten years. We have sought expert assistance throughout, to enable us to gain new understandings, make progress, consolidate and then move forward a little more. We were involved with [Hei Kakano and Kei Ko Oak Panuku and now Po Tama Ponaumu] and all of those have helped us shape an understanding of what it looks like to guide our Māori learners to achieve success as Māori. 

 

00:11:43:19 - 00:12:04:16 

Anna McDowall 

It has been slow work, it has involved changes in classrooms, departments, timetables, teacher roles. But the changes are becoming embedded are both systematic and systemic. The ongoing mahi tahi is to get us all on the same waka. We're not there yet, but we're paddling in the right direction. Kia ora.  

[clapping] 

 

Equity in STEM in schools: James Hargest College video (12.10 mins)

Deputy Principal Anna McDowall presents on how James Hargest College takes steps to improve equity in their school.

Equity in STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

[Two women are sitting down in an office environment. One is Kathryn Jenkin, Co-Head of Department of Science, the other is Whaea Naomi Cusack, Kaiako Māori, Co-Head of House

Kia ora. I'm Naomi Cusack, lifting up an old warrior and also H.O.H.

00:00:10:09 - 00:00:42:09
Speaker 2
Kia ora. Katherine Jean can keep it up in a way. Western Springs College and head of department, co-head of Department Science. We as a Science department said "Our Maori learners are not doing as well as our other students and our department. It seemed natural to speak to the heads of houses of our Waiōrea kura to say how, how can we together?

00:00:42:11 - 00:00:50:02
Speaker 2
Or How can we as a department support these students to achieve what they need to achieve to keep on going in their pathway?

00:00:51:03 - 00:01:20:11
Speaker 1
Expectations are huge for me and, sometimes what I know of our kids, they don't have that self-belief. And sometimes it's actually a matter of of somebody in their life saying, "Well, I actually believe -  I believe that you can do it. So you might need to fall over a few times, and you might not succeed the first time. But if we don't give up in our attitude as well, that's a learning curve or that's a building block or or that's, you know, my first scaffold.


The learning actually happens.

00:01:24:03 - 00:01:43:15
Speaker 2
After a few informal conversations with Whaea Naomi and Whaea Bella as their heads of houses we locked in a regular 30 minute slot. And by regular, I mean weekly, maybe a bit longer than 30 minutes until about in the morning. And actually talk about individual students based on the data, based on what their needs were at the time.

-
And how we could support each other.

00:01:45:17 - 00:01:49:04
Speaker 2
To support them. And so actions would come out of those meetings.

00:01:49:12 - 00:02:32:03
Speaker 1
And I guess the awesome thing about that triangular kind of relationship, that we had with us as classical students and parents became a natural progression from those meeting slots and and really allowed us to get some good learning and buy in from our students. And they started to kind of enjoy the subjects, relationships, data, conversation and bringing that stuff all together to actually create a program that is probably more tailored to not just a group of students, but individual students, because we did do a lot of that as well.

00:02:32:24 - 00:02:45:01
Speaker 1
And having those conversations at an individual level, as well as a collective level in terms of some of our, er, kids in the classes that they took within science.

00:02:45:09 - 00:03:28:04
Speaker 2
Our results last year and for example, Level Two Chemistry and Level Two Biology Standards have increased quite drastically. 10 to 20% increase in achievement for our Māori learners and its Māori learners across both kura.  We try and the whole school. As a government we're trying to model everything we do on TE Treaty or Waitangi. So yeah, our outcomes for Maria, hugely important, but also the status and the positions of our Māori kaiako should be equal to those of our high school Pākeha.

00:03:28:04 - 00:03:56:23
Speaker 2
I suppose what I firstly wanted to explain is that our results, this massive jump in results, particularly in our level two Chemistry, physics, biology, single sciences last year was not my work. It was the result of the gorgeous Whaea Nomi that you just saw there in Whea Bella, our other HRH as well as my mentor Julie De giving me a bit of a challenge.

00:03:57:01 - 00:04:18:13
Speaker 2
What are you what am I going to do? As well as the incredible team that I work with and our science department every day. So the results did increase and that's, I suppose, what NZQA has noticed. The other point I wanted to make, though, was that the measure of success of our beautiful [Tawhaira]  is not NCEA results only.

00:04:19:05 - 00:04:45:12
Speaker 2
We've got other ways that we define success, and we're talking about that quite a bit at the moment. But that's the hard data that we've got. And I do believe. Yes that it  does. Tell us something. Some of the anecdotal stuff that we have noticed, though, as the communication between our akonga and the science, classical has increased massively verbal communication, emailing and yep, body language, everything which has been super, super cool to see.

00:04:46:07 - 00:05:07:11
Speaker 2
The other thing, of course, is the relationships with their whanau that has happened as a result of that to, are also the heads of houses by a Nomi and five Bella and I have noticed the increase in confidence of these  in the Science subjects, but also across other subjects too. And except for us, the other is to give us some more formal data.

00:05:07:11 - 00:05:28:16
Speaker 2
So to get some student voice to do what? Judge injury and I've forgotten her name on the spot. Glennis! So what they have been doing to actually see if is something that the students think to do, not just our idea a little bit of context for our career. We are a I did the outcome of that we were tracking so our message was very similar.

00:05:28:16 - 00:06:09:21
Speaker 2
I've remembered Waireka?. Our message was very similar to what Anna has talked about, where we literally got a spreadsheet and pulled out the names of learners who actually were and in [ Maori}. But our Māori learners essentially looked at them and started every week saying every day critical of those students would be writing down with our at what they are up to if there was missing, if they had questions, if they were interested in something career wise, whatever had come up, if they'd talked to home and then I would meet with Whaea Bella I Nomi weekly I see it half an hour.

00:06:10:08 - 00:06:34:05
Speaker 2
Naomi reckons longer, but we would meet until that kind of every Tuesday morning and we would talk about actual data, like actual things that teachers had written and say from there, what actions have we got and who's going to do it? And in our context, we have we based we've tried to, I suppose, based the whole system on Te Tiriti ō Waitangi.

00:06:34:05 - 00:06:52:24
Speaker 2
We've got a CO governance model we've got and that's obviously not what everyone can go home and do. But we do have two schools that I'm talking about. One is mapping out a while there. One is with some Springs College, we're on the same site. And so I suppose my message though is start small. So I last year didn't try and look at every single Māori learner in the whole school or every Pacific Islander in it.

00:06:52:24 - 00:07:21:05
Speaker 2
And it's definitely a next step. But you start with something little and we started yet with our students that were and senior Sciences level two and three that were also in while that of course gave me I mean these learners are in in immersion they are and it's not a Kura Kaupapa Māori we don't use to have a motto, but I suppose accidently lots of our teachers have got those ideas because they haven't perhaps been and could have got up before.

00:07:21:14 - 00:07:46:10
Speaker 2
But what you said Kia ora, that was really cool to hear about different ways of learning it. And yeah, these students that I'm talking about have been in our room. Lucky day. Oh, they've been at an up in or y or our fun years, 1911 for PTO and then they come in to Western Springs College for their  Chemistry or biology or physics or sustainability or cross curricular science.

00:07:46:10 - 00:08:15:24
Speaker 2
So it's quite yeah, potentially different. So tracking them became an important starting point for us. The other part of the context is that it's not done in silo. We've been working on culturally responsive pedagogies that's something that absolutely has to go hand in hand for a number of years and also curriculum development. So looking at [Māori] , how we are integrating that, I'm thinking about like on the cultural at the local contexts that we can be using but I hate for work to happen the too.

00:08:16:20 - 00:08:45:11
Speaker 2
And yeah, I suppose it is the big shift for me is a Pākeha and middle management and this kind of position of power was to yes I "help I don't know what I'm doing" and went to some people find out Whaea Bella what else can we do and they that attitude that it's my job to learn and my job to find out about what's going on.

00:08:45:22 - 00:09:17:15
Speaker 2
What firstly the you know, whether we're standing on what is this place, how can I connect bit. I'm not an expert in that, but I can learn that. And can it fit to the curriculum areas that I'm responsible for that I do know a bit about? Yeah. How can I then connect those things together and, also reach out to these experts a bell if I know me, know these kids, know the phonics so well and they could help me or kicks them or ring them of they might be in the middle of this other thing right now.

00:09:17:15 - 00:09:37:22
Speaker 2
They just they had that overview. So we can really close somebody with those heaps of houses with super powerful deans, I suppose. And again, a next step there would be to be working with more heats of houses across the school and that structured way. So the key things relationship between us as Kaiako critical relationships between us is critical and the learners.

00:09:37:22 - 00:09:56:03
Speaker 2
And if no major and I'd heard that many times I didn't really know what it meant until going through this process, the high expectations, it was absolutely crucial. Nobody was allowed to fail so that nobody was wasn't that nobody was allowed to follow. We don't have to not have this stuff. And they weren't allowed to not mess things in.

00:09:56:03 - 00:10:19:22
Speaker 2
And when you do that, you can't help that succeed. So we would put things in place, protections in place immediately. The clear communication was really important and it definitely didn't happen straight away. There were lots of miscommunications, lots of tears, apologies, lots of having to front up and say, I thought you mean this, but actually we're doing that and I'm sorry, how can we fix it?

00:10:20:17 - 00:10:43:16
Speaker 2
Really clear actions follow through on the actions and then follow through on the follow through. So making sure those things actually got done and that regular meeting really helps with that. So yeah, next step for me, asking the Tora what they think. I think it will. I think you talked about it about end cleaners and judge and very

Kia ora, that's me.

Equity in STEM schools: Ngā Puna o Waiōrea Western Springs College video (10.49 mins)

Co-head of Department Science Kathryn Jenkin presents on how Ngā Puna o Waiōrea Western Springs College takes steps to improve equity in their school.

Equity in STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

[Jazzy, upbeat music] 

[Motto on school building: Quaerere Verum. Bayfield High School] 

[Signs at the school: Bayfield High School, Co-ed All together better, mātauranga rangatira, he taina manaaki] 

[Bevan Townsend sits talking to the camera with the school motto in the background] 

So, Bevan Townsend, Assistant Principal Teaching and Learning. 

So for the last five years, I've been involved in creating the class placements at Year 9 and 10. We've done that using EASL and LIKSOL data as well as anecdotal data that's come through from the feeder schools.  

[Three students are working together with a microscope in a classroom] 

And inadvertently, I've been, we've created an unconscious bias against our Māori and Pacific students. 

Last year, we used base nine or Mediastata. 

[Bevan Townsend talks to the camera again] 

And that showed that there was no difference between Māori, Pasifika, and our European students.  

[Two teachers are talking to each other as some students work at their desks] 

[A student is writing in a workbook at their desk] 

But when you looked at the percentage of students in the low ability classes, we had that bias against them. 

[Bevan Townsend talks to the camera again] 

And in the past we've had an extension band, a mid-band, and what we call "a student support band". The student support band had predominantly higher numbers of Māori and Pasifika in that class. The teachers taught to the level. The expectations on those students probably wasn't as high as it was if you're in the mixed or the extension band. 

[A teacher talks to two students at their desks in a classroom] 

So in that extension band, they taught according to 'we need to push these students', whereas they took it a lot more softly, a lot more gentle, with the lower ability kids. And we're probably doing them a disservice by not putting higher expectations on them. 

[A teacher talks to the camera while sitting in a classroom] 

So we were streaming the lower band classes and the science year eleven classes last year and that's now not happening this year. So it's interesting because at first I was a little bit dubious as to how well that would work. Because when you've got the students who are struggling together, you can sort of pitch it at their level.  

[A teacher stands at the whiteboard and explains something to the students in the classroom] 

But I found it really really quite quite good, really. I'm really enjoying it. 

[Three students are working together with a microscope in a classroom] 

[One student operates the microscope] 

It just means some different approaches in terms of preparation. 

[A teacher talks to the camera while sitting in a classroom] 

So, uh, quite interesting to go from being sort of fully streamed, I suppose, to not really not being streamed. And so, it's just it provides a wide range of students. And so, I think teachers and myself, you know, possibly some other teachers, just need to really upskill for, and develop our toolbox for the students who are not so able. 

[Exterior view of the school with the reception and the sign: Bayfield High School). 

[Mark Jones starts to speak]

Kia ora tatou. Ko Mark Jones tōku ingoa. Tumuaki Bayfield High School in beautiful Dunedin, Otepoti.

The worst position to be talking. It's not in the day to be talking. Second worst is just before lunch. The worst is just after lunch, at least just before lunch. I can hold you hostage, so I will be very, very quick in what I'm going to say.

In fact, what I'm going to say is not what I thought I was going to say. The video wasn't what I thought it was going to be. When I originally asked to come and speak, I was asked to to to talk about what we were doing well, but as teachers, as practitioners, as reflective practitioners, we always focus on what we can do better.

And so you will have garnered from the video there, that's actually what I'm really going to be talking about is streaming. We call it banding, but really it's just the pig with lipstick on it’s streaming. I'm not you may have gathered a huge fan of streaming. Educationally. I believe it is questionable in terms of socially, emotionally and psychologically

I think it can be significantly corrosive for a significant proportion of our kids. And so, this year we have ditched it at Bayfield. This is the third high school I've been at. It's the third high school I've thrown streaming out of because I don't believe in it. I actually said that at my interview to the board and they said they liked streaming.

So I was surprised when I got the job. But over the past year or so, we've made the case for why it needed to go. And I do like numbers. I am an ex-head of science, so if I just put some numbers out there in terms of my school, my staff would say they were very balanced in their opinion and they are good people.

Please, they don't look at being out there to disadvantage people with intention. But 15% Māori, that's in my school. When I looked at the bottom class, 50% Māori when I looked at the top class, 4% Māori. When I looked at the stand down and suspensions, Māori were overrepresented. When I looked at students who left between the start of Year 9 and the end of Year 10, 50% were Māori.

Streaming doesn't work for Bayfield, no it actually doesn’t. I believe it doesn't work in the vast majority of schools in New Zealand and so consequently I'm very much here explaining, but in terms of if you want to get the best for your Māori student students and I have to say I do feel a bit of an imposter. It's very strange being an Irishman talking about Māori and Pasifika education, but if you want to get the best for Māori and Pasifika students, you have to lift that ceiling, you have to lift the aspirations.

When we looked at the data, one of the arguments people were making for having a low ability class was we can put the work at their level and we will get them up. We will accelerate them. I'm a huge believer in data. I'm a huge believer in added value. When we looked at the added value, all we did was take away from that bottom class.

So in terms of the biggest action that we can take in our schools for progressing our Māori and Pasifika students, particularly in the area of STEM, is create the opportunities for them to do it, get rid of those ceilings and show them that actually we really are a transformational industry. We are the industry of hope. Give them that.

 Thank you.

Equity in STEM in schools: Bayfield High School video (6.22 mins)

Principal Mark Jones presents on how Bayfield High School takes steps to improve equity in their school.

Equity in STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

Viliami: Kia ora, and warm Pasifika greetings. Amanaki STEM Academy. My name is Viliami Teumohenga and this is my beautiful wife over here. And thank you very much for NZQA for inviting my wife and I to share our Amanaki STEM academic training with you all. 

I respectfully acknowledge the expertise and experience here today. This is truly an honour and I give God the glory for this opportunity. I want to also thank students and parents for allowing us to speak on behalf and waking up early in the morning to come here willing to inform the students of Amanaki STEM Academy.  

I was born and raised in Tonga. My father is from Neiafu and my mother is from Ha'apai, two different islands. I grew up in the main island and this is from my mom and she's one of the best. My father always tells us we don't own any land or any assets. Our only assest is our mind. Therefore, education is our only chance of a better life. 

I moved to New Zealand for any university studies in the 90s where I met my wife, Tanya. 

Tanya: So as my husband has shared with you a little bit about our journey to New Zealand. So to cut a very long story short, we were both sent here to go to university and we met at Massey and we didn't graduate with a B.A., but we did get a B.A.B.Y. 
 
[Audience laughs]  
 
Thank you. And so, oh, I'm going to get in trouble now. So as a result, so we had a child and we were quite young at the time. So here we were unqualified, no work experience. And now I have to raise a child that depends on both of us. And it was then that we realised the need for a qualification, because we sincerely believe that education is one pathway to well-being. 

And so I was a stay-at-home mom for 13 years and had two more B.A.B.Ys after the first B.A.B.Y, we and we decided we needed to go back to school and we also needed to invest in our children's education by being informed as parents, by being active and being present. And I would like to ask if we can play the video before I continue this story that I promise you won't be long. 
  
[A video plays on the screen. It shows a hall full of people laughing, children studying, a lecturer delivering a lesson, people working on a computer and people doing other things together in a community environment, such as performing a dance on stage. 
The video’s narrator says:  
The ASA (Amanaki STEM Academy) environment is just a real family environment. Everyone comes together. We're all doing the same thing. We're all going through the same struggles. But I feel like it's really important. Bringing having us out here is really, really important for especially for people in today's society who are also, you know, Pasifika, bringing all the minorities together. When I first started, it was I was very shy. 
So my confidence was like I was lacking a lot of confidence.

But when I came to ASA, I got to grow a good relationship with all the people in the Pacific community and as well as that I, my confidence in my studies grew a lot. I got to learn heaps of new things and got extra tutoring was which was really helpful. I feel like the environment that ASA has is very family like and it's very supportive. ASA helped me a lot like at school, even though I know sometimes I don't understand what people are saying, but I'm trying my best to like ask for help and stuff.

So yeah, but I really like I am really enjoying ASA and it's really fun. Not fun, fun. It's challenging. It can be challenging stuff. So yeah, like people started to like encourage me to stand up and stuff. So yeah, and I really like it. That's the other thing I really like about us. People always just smile and sort of just show you love and respect.

That's it. That's how I feel. So it's like a family. It's like you're walking through a family. And so, yeah, and it's really enjoying. I highly recommend ASA for many other Pacific students, I feel like it's very good to start when you're younger. Even though I started at year 12. But we have a lot of little kids now, so and they're going to grow throughout the ASA thing, so it could be really good for them. 


[The video ends and the audience applauds] 
 
Tanya: The next slide, thank you. So we invested in our child's education and she did relatively well and that is where she met our four other original Amanaki STEM academy students. So this group here, they are known as the Milo and Crackers Club.  
 
[The screen on stage shows an image of 5 students] 
 
And Georgia, who was here earlier, belongs to that original group of five girls. Now they come to our house every weekend, and during the school holidays, my husband tutors them in science and math, and I was the literacy tutor slash telling them off when they're chatting too much tutor. 

So the success of, of this group brought more parents to ask if my husband can help tutor their children in science and math. So the growth of ASA is organic. It grew out of the need that was identified by not just our young people, but our parents in the community. And the reason this is the photo we chose, because there are no photos of the girls when they used to study at home on weekends and school holidays, because when they arrive at home on Friday, I remove all their phones and hand it back to them when they go back to their house on Sunday. 


So this is the only photo of them together. And to this day that is the rule. Still, at ASA, where are the phones are removed in the beginning of the session and given back to all the students after the closing prayer. And I also want to emphasise that we are a group of parents who came together because we noticed that there is an elitist view of STEM subjects in high school. 


There is a thing I discovered called the Asian five and the Asian five refers to biology, mathematics, all the Sciences, Math and English is usually what the Asian students and Pakeha students take. Our children take other subjects. So, we recognised that a group of parents, because we can't afford to go to NumberWorks or Kip McGrath because it's $58 an hour and nobody got time or money. 
 
[Audience laughs] 
 
Okay. So we thought my husband, fortunately still remembers a lot of basic knowledge, math and science from high school. So he was the first tutor. And from this group of five, ASA grew into that group of 50 students. We currently have another on the roll and 50 students on the waiting list.  
 
[The screen on stage shows an image of ASA with text that says About us] 
 
Oh, so a little bit more about us. In 2017, it was decided that to formalise ASA as a charitable trust with a governance board. And our students, we have students from year 7 to 13, and they remain on the programme for as long as they wish to be. And the reason that we decided to capture our young people much earlier is because we noticed that when Pasifika students get to year 9, they are already behind in their Math and Science. 


They're already afraid of Science and Math. It's like: Oh, that's too hard for me, you know? So we thought, we need to capture them early and build that confidence and fill those gaps so that when they get to Year 10 and 11, they are either at where they're supposed to be or excelling because interventions that come in at Year 12 and 13, it's wonderful.

But a lot of our kids are already disadvantaged. So it's a bit too late. Our ASA alumni group is growing as well. We currently have 6 students at Otago University, 2 at Canterbury University, 1 at UCOL in Palmerston North and 1 at Auckland University, which is Georgia, and they're all enrolled in STEM degrees. One of our students is doing astrophysics. 


I've no idea what that is, but it sounds fancy  
 
[Audience laughs] 
 
[The screen on stage changes to a slide. The text reads: 


Our Approach 
Relationships built on genuine regard 
Trust 
Nurture confidence 
Wrap around support 
Understand and respect context, make up of our families and community. 
 
So everybody's been asking what is your model or what is your approach? The thing about a model is it's constraining and regardless how amazing your model is, if we don't have genuine regard and treat people like a human being, doesn't matter how amazing a model is, it's never going to work.  

So we choose to share with you our approach, our approach of genuine building relationships that are genuine, that trust that we, our parents and students give us, we don't take lightly. We nurture their confidence and we provide wrap-around support. All of that will be discussed later on. And we also understand the context. We understand and respect the context and around our families’ lives. 


You know, our families are not all on the higher end of the socio-economic scale. We have a range of families. You know, some of us, there’s 10 of us for example, in my house, there's 10 of us in it right now. So if you can, you know, that's the reality of our families. I think that 10% that was up here earlier, I think a lot of our ASA families can relate to that at some point and on some level. 


So how do we build genuine relationships? We actually take the time to ask our students what went well this year? What did you enjoy in ASA this year? What do you think needs to change and how can we improve that? So we get feedback from our students and we get feedback from our parents. And the thing is, we learn as we grow. 


And I think the advantage we have in being able to do that is because we are a smaller group. That trust, so not only do we have to earn the trust of our parents and family, but we give them our trust as well. So before any student comes onto the programme, we have a talanoa with the student and their parents.

 
You guys all know where you remember that. And it's about sharing expectations. And the biggest thing for us is commitment. You know, like, we're not we're not the homework group where you drop your child off and then you just go and pick them up after. Our parents are active, they are the backbone of this programme. Okay. And we're going to start crying, so. 
 
[Audience laughs]  
 
So I get very emotional when I talk about these children and their parents because, you know, at ASA, everybody is valued because everybody has something to contribute in any in any way that they can. So now I'll ask my amazing husband, because I'm going to start crying to talk to you about the weekly sessions. 
 
[The screen’s slide changes. The new slide shows several images of students at ASA. The text reads Weekly Study Sessions]  
 
[Speaker one] 
And the weekly study sessions that's run on Tuesday and Thursday. The aim of the weekly study is to compliment the schools, what the schools are doing and providing learning supports for students. Some of some of the students, they don't have any place at home to study. So providing that Tuesday and Thursday will give them time to study.  


Sessions are held in [unknown] is close to where the majority of our students. We initially run from 4 to 6 and we find out it's not really working. So most of most of them are play sports at the time or training. So we moved the study from 6 to 8 and enable all those students in training and the sessions start before prayer. 

If you look in the picture over there, I think there's been a circling in the circle. They sit in a circle and start with a prayer and then finish with a prayer. They go after they clean up, then they sit in the circle again. We provide a healthy meal at all sessions and it is really important. So they have a healthy body and a healthy mind and we use a lot of resources. Resources is really important for us.

For example, if we have a maths book, we don't have just one, one book, we have maybe two or three different books for Level 1 or Year 11 or Year 9 or Year 10. So most of the students, they look at this textbook, they can't really understand anything, but they use the other one, which is, makes them think: Oh, this is really easy. 

So we try and make sure we have enough textbooks of different variety. So again, so they can choose from. The other thing we have to really build our rapport with, with the with the students, the young people. But we started at the beginning when we start to have a calendar with them, with the parents, and we have that expectation between both of us, as Tanya was talking about. 

And another thing that when the student comes to Amanaki STEM Academy, I always remind them when they come in the group and then they see one of their friends: Oh! He's a smart boy. She's a smart girl. And then I stop them. So smart is not used at ASA. I stopped them because I said everybody have the same brain cells. 


I think biologists know that. I don't really know, I just read it.  
 
[Audience laughs] 
 
But it's hard work and one of the school in Palmerston North, it says to nothing achieve without hard work. So I have to remind them, that’s the motto of their school. Smart means that you work faster, you learn things faster. So there's nothing called ‘smart is hard work’.  

Someone learn things faster and someone learn things slower. Okay. And it's what we work on. If a young person comes in we know his learning ability is slower, we slow down and work with them and speed them up. It's the same way as you train as an athlete. You train someone from slower to run faster. 

Maybe ASA [unkown]  he's from Palmerston North, he knows that. And most of the time they look at the exercise book and go: Oh this is really hard. And I have to remind them we stopped that word too. Hard, sometimes it means it's impossible, but challenging means you can work through it and get over it. So those are the barriers when they come in, they have that mindset. But just remove a few of the barriers that we can see that helps him to build that confidence.

Oh, I can do it. And just and I remind them in every session that schools are very short, they only have 3 terms. And now why is it only 3 terms? Because term 4 is exams. So you only have 1 to 3 to try and cover your material. 
So it's really short. So after term one, two more terms left, and then it’s straight to exams. 
  
[The screen’s slide changes. The new slide shows several images of ASA students in a school-holiday programme. The text reads School Holiday Programme] 
 
One of our service offerings is the school holidays and the reason we offer ASA during the school holidays. We start at 9.30 in the morning, finish at 3.30. It's pretty much the whole two weeks because we recognised as the 4 hours a week for the weekly sessions is not enough time. As mentioned before, our students don't really have access to resources in the home. 

Some of our homes are overcrowded. They literally don't have the physical space to sit down and study. So the school holiday programmes, we use it to fill any gaps from the previous term and then prepare them for the upcoming term. We take them on trips that are offered to us for free, and that's about exposing them to the different areas of STEM so that it keeps them inspired and motivated. 

We have sports days and a lot of fun activities that we do to keep it fun because it's quite a long day. The senior study camp is one of the main focus for us ASA too. We recognise out of a need from our students and parents that our students need to be better prepared for the NCEA exams. So we run these exams for 3 weeks last year and before the exam we have an ASA family lotto to pray for the preparations to bless our students and tutors to be able to equip them for this holiday program. 

So the STEM camp, the highlight of our ASA calendar is our celebrations at the end of the year with the efforts and work ethic of our students are recognised, the commitment and passion of our tutors, stakeholders and everybody that helps out is honoured. And please do come along if you get an invitation from us.   
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says Family. There are several images of people in a group setting] 
 
I want to spend a little bit of time on this because this is really what ASA’s about.

If you look at the photo at the bottom, it's quite significant because a lot of times our dads are not really involved in our children's activities or things. At ASA, you see this photo here, all our dads turn up and they're the ones that make the barbecue. The parents on top there, our family days are about regrouping, reconnecting with each other and setting the tone and the scene for the upcoming year. 
  
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says COVID. There are images of people in a Zoom call] 
 
This is our COVID approach. When COVID hit, we were very lucky to have had donated 50 laptops from digital wings. So when the lockdown happened, our students already had laptops. And so the sessions during the week moved to Zoom.  
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says Outcomes – Academic Achievements. There are images of students receiving and holding awards] 
 
So some of our outcomes, our academic achievements in 2019, we had a 100% success pass rate for all our senior students, 80% or more of those. 
 
[Audience applause]  
 
Thank you. 80% or more of those, actually, endorsed with merit or excellence. We have 8 of our students from 2018 to 2021 in accelerated classes. The top student in Palmerston North Boys High 2018 was an ASA student. 2019 one of our student [unknown] intermediate LSC and we, out of the 8 ASA alumni students that have gone to university, 13 scholarships were awarded together and overall, they added up to the value of $152,000 amongst the 8 students.  
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says Outcomes – Brown and proud. There are images of students in small groups] 
 
Our second outcome is our students having a positive cultural image or cultural identity. They are comfortable and confident in who they are, whether they are entrenched in their culture or not as connected. It's fine. They have a place in us because we celebrate and accept and welcome everybody. They also gain a little bit more insight into the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents to get them to where they are today. Because our parents are involved, our parents come to the weekly sessions they make, the meals they serve the meals, they hang around there and they are present. Kind of like the cheer leading squad while the kids are studying.

And that's the family culture that's created in ASA. The children see their parents every week at the study session, not just at the rugby game and the rugby practice. So for them it reinforces their education and work ethic, and excelling in academia is important too.  
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says Outcomes – Navigating ‘both worlds’. There are images of students in a formal setting and holding signs outside] 
 
One of the outcomes that we've achieved as a family is our students’ ability to engage successfully in both worlds.

We have students who have been awarded scholarships to the NZ UN model. Grace, our Head Girl is the organiser for the climate change rally in Palmerston North. We have students who are on the Palmerston North Youth Council, so it's about for us it's not just being confident in the Pasifika space, but it's being confident outside, in the schools, in the in the community.

And our students actually challenge a lot of the stereotypes and racism that they face in the schools they attend. They now ask questions because they feel like they have a voice. And why do they feel that way now? It's because they all look after each other. They know they are loved not just by their parents, but all the parents at ASA take these kids on as their own so they come from a big family.  
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says ASA Investment each year. There is an image of a bar graph. The graph’s text says Investment per child at ASA each year from 2018 to 2020. 
 
So this is a interesting slide. Investment per child at ASA from 2018 to 2020. Our funding has directly benefited our kids. The bulk of the funding goes to feeding them and to resourcing. We have textbooks, we have fold-out notes, we know that the majority of our students have never seen a fold-out before, that's because they're so expensive and they're not readily available in all schools.

At ASA, we have fold-out notes from year 9 all the way to year 13. And the challenge for us there, though, is hustling for funding every year.  
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says Investment as a comparison. There is an image of a bar graph. The graph’s text says Investment per young person $$. The graph shows that the amount of funding ASA receives compared to other initiatives is low.] 
 
So over here, when you look across the spectrum as a comparison, New Zealand education investment per child in 2017 was 10,000 is up there. Government flagship apprenticeship focuses on getting Maori and Pacific into employment.

And then there’s ASA. Just to put that in perspective. 
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says Challenges and lessons learned (key takeways)]  

Challenges and lessons learned resourcing is a huge challenge for us. We have to apply for funding every year. We need a suitable venue because now we can't fit in the Pasifika centre in Palmy. So if any of you is friends with a Microsoft CEO, put in a good word for us! 

[Audience laughs] 

Post ASA, you know students on nurtured in the program from year 9 to 13 and then they go off to university and that support the support systems are not there anymore. So that's an area of learning. But, you know, let's not forget that all of us, including the tutors and the parents, are volunteers. We actually work full time somewhere else.  

Okay. Some key takeaways. It's about dignity, but it's also about sorry. It's also about, you know, as educators, you have a lot on your plate already. You have to do all your NCEA reports and all those paperwork, plus try and teach our children. So do you have time and energy to be able to build a genuine relationship with our kids?

I think maybe if you want to, you could. And my plea to you today is to please want to. You can come to our community, things, you know, don't just wait for us to come to school to talk to you there. 
You can go to one of your Pacific children student’s church function. You know, come and get to know us as a person.

Come and talk to us. One of the other things that I want to highlight today is that our governance board for ASA are accessible to our kids and to our parents. They don't just sit there somewhere and make decisions and we have to report to them. They come to everything that we do. They are active in it. They know the kids’ names. They know the parents’ names.

There is a genuine connection there because our children are worth it. And if we're not doing something now, then the current statistics that say Pasifika are underachieving in everything, homeless here and there. It's going to be worse for them if nothing is done. But I also want to add on to Georgia's challenge. We don't have to do this.

The government needs to step up and do something to bridge these gaps. What we need from government, from those in power and those who are able, we need you to trust in us. We know what we are doing. We know what our children's needs are, our children know what their needs are. We need your support and we need the resources.

So that we can mobilise ourselves. And please, expectations. You know, please raise your expectations for our children. Please don't tell them no, just take one science subject, because if you don't pass the other two, then it'll look bad on our school data. Please don't do that. Raise your expectations because we have high expectations of our children, not just academically but as human beings to be kind, to be respectful. 

That's why our values are embedded into this program. To be kind and respectful, respect their elders, respect each other. That is my plea to you. I don't know if you have time in your busy day. And I know that teachers there’s a lot on your plate. But I hope you make the time to really, genuinely get to know us. 

We have 2 Pakeha teachers who volunteer with ASA and I thank you, Mr. Milne and Rebecca Ward, for wanting to build that genuine relationship with our kids and our parents. I'd like to invite quickly children, our Amanaki STEM Academy family.  We're going to close with a hymn, to give glory to God. And in doing so, we thank you all for this opportunity to share our story with you. 
 
[The slide changes. The new slide has a heading that says Himi 114: ‘Eiki Koe ‘Ofa ‘A’Au] 
 
There's so much more that we can tell you about ASA, but maybe another time. If you want to know, genuinely, please come and ask.  
 
 

Equity in STEM and Amanaki STEM Academy video (32.34 mins)

Tanya Koro, Viliamu Teumohenga, Grace Fakahau and Lawrence Leung-Wai present on how Amanaki STEM Academy boosts equity in STEM learning for their community.

Equity in STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

[NZQA logo]

[Māori to be added]  

[Screen shows speakers names, Naomi Manu and Meschka Seifritz from Pūhoro STEM Academy]

[Speaker is Naomi Manu]

E ngā mana

E ngā reo

E ngā iwi

Ko rau rangatira ma tena koutou katoa

Ki te manuwhenua ki tenei 

Ki tena pito, ki tena pito o te whenua nui o Te Whanganui o Tara

Tena koutou katoa.

Kia koutou ngā kaimahi te mana tohu o te mātauranga o te Aotearoa

Tenei koutou katoa.

Indeed. It's a wonderful honour to be here with you all today and to see how many people are here when you're sitting down, you don't sort of look behind you. 

[Screen shows the words Pūhoro - he waka eke noa]


So and now that we're up here, it's kind of, wow, this is amazing. So I just really also want to congratulate NZQA on bringing together this wonderful group of people and congratulate you on the great success of this conference. No reira tēnā koutou. 


I, um, there are a few things that I want to actually do before I go there. 

[Screen shows photos of members of Pūhoro]


There's one thing I want to do with you, and I wonder if over here I could have the first 3 rows stand up, please, and maybe the row behind as well. Ka pai. 


Okay. So according to the Tertiary Education Commission, 13 to 14% of Māori school leavers leave school and move onto a STEM ah, sorry, a degree-level programme at a tertiary institution, 13%, 13 to 14%. 


So if we compare that within this room, that's about this many people.  
 
[Speaker points to the people standing from the first four rows] 
 
And so thank you, thank you. Please sit down. So part of what we wanted to do back in 2015 is we wanted to disrupt the prevailing narrative around Māori student success. And we decided in order to do that we would focus, we would narrow the focus in STEM because we knew that by 2030 the majority of careers would require some level of STEM competency. 


Now, with 13% of Māori school leavers going on to tertiary at degree level, there's a lot of work to do. So back in 2015 with the trusty whiteboard marker and whiteboard close by, we spent many months conceptualising and creating the Pūhoro programme and delivery model, recognising a significant gap that was ever widening in terms of Māori student achievement full stop, let alone Māori student achievement and STEM.


We were drawn to a new approach that focused holistically on a multi-dimensional problem with the image of a waka fresh in our mind, we methodically drafted what would become the Pūhoro programme.

We then set about meeting with high school principals, university academics, science teachers, science lecturers, government officials, whānau and rangatahi personally discussing our vision and asking them to come on board. 


It came as a surprise to us that we got a lot of kickback, unfortunately. And I think that that's just the normal, that's the expectation when you try] to do something different and try to do something dramatically different, too.  


But we didn't expect quite as much as we received. Having said that, there were some organisations who just couldn't see how the model could fit within the current way their education was being delivered for Māori and they also couldn't, couldn't and for some, they also couldn't see the way that they would be able to change, the way that their funding mechanisms operated and to enable us to be able to do what we wanted to do. 


However, 97 students from a handful of schools within the Manawatu committed to coming on board and to mark the occasion, we wanted to launch the programme with a proverbial bang hearing through the kumera vine that there was a Māori who worked at NASA.

We managed to get his phone number and I called Mr. Mana Vautier after stalking him for a particular period of time. 


So we called him over in Houston, Texas. After a brief conversation, Mana was all in and keen to attend. I invited him to come over to Palmerston North to our thriving metropolis and to launch the Pūhoro STEM academy. But he had to double check with the boss, his wife. He called back and he said it was all good and he also had a proposition. 


Mana’s colleague, astronaut Colonel Richard Searforce was keen to be part of the launch as well and he said that he would gladly come and support. I told him that I would have to think about that for a minute and I'll get back to him.  


But in 2016, I think it was January the 30th of 2016, with the grand total of three full time Pūhoro staff, the programme was launched in Palmerston North with Mana Vautier and astronaut Colonel Rick Searforce was from the NASA Space Center in Houston, Texas. 


This was a clear and resounding indication to our rangatahi that not even the sky was the limit for their potential.  


We've seen some steady growth in the programme, which has been realised just as partners like NZQA have supported us to further expand and grow. Now I'm just, I just have an infographic just to highlight some of the growth over the last five years of the programme. 
 
[An infographic featuring a map of New Zealand is displayed on the screen. The infographic’s title is  Number of rangatahi Māori per region in the Pūhoro STEM Academy in 2016.  
Several regions in New Zealand are highlighted and numbers of rangatahi in the academy are shown. These numbers are shown rising.] 
 
So we grew in 2017 to 190 rangatahi, in 2018, we opened another two regions, expanded to Kapiti and South Auckland to 339. 2019, we grew those regions and increased to 540 rangatahi.

In 2020, we expanded to the South Island and now we have an programme and 741 rangatahi. 


Now, what's important about this growth is that it has been a steady growth because we want, we didn't want to grow too fast because we still wanted to maintain the integrity and the quality of the programme. We've been able to do that across the regions as we have expanded, but we've been very careful about that as well. 


Now 2021, we have expanded into Te Matau-a-Māui, so we’re now in the Hawke's Bay and we also have begun in the Ruapehu region in partnership with Ngāti Rangi and Genesis. Later this year with Waikato University, we will expand a further hundred rangatahi in the Waikato region.  

Now. And I think that it's really important to also say that with all of the rangatahi in the programme, as we look at this, this level of expansion, it's also important to note that these are rangatahi who are actively pursuing STEM pathways. 

And so in terms of having a look at that 13% of Māori who are who, who are transitioning into tertiary educationat degree level. So we're trying to fix that and also whilst also keeping them engaged in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

And so for the 86 iwi that these rangatahi affiliate to, this is something to really celebrate, but it's still not enough.

 
There's less than 2% of Māori who are currently employed in the scientific workforce in this country. And so there’s a lot of, although these numbers look really promising, these’s still a whole lot of work to do. 


Okay, the Pūhoro model. Would you just mind clicking that first one? Here we go. 
 
[An image is displayed on the screen. The image says the Pūhoro model, whānau STEM expos] 
 
All right. So when a rangatahi enrolls and registers with the Pūhoro programmeme, we also register their whānau. And there are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, we recognise that whānau is a key driver of success.

And secondly, it's said that we can know who, who is their household, who in their family. And that way we can engage them in sometimes reengage them with education. 


So we have whānau STEM expos and we now have whānau who may have three or four children that have come through the portal programme as well. So starting with that, 97 students now we've got siblings in the Manawatu coming through the programme and that's occurring across other regions as well.  

Now that's really important because we're starting to engage STEM champions within the home that's having an impact in the home. 

And so whānau STEM expos are really important. And because we know who is in the home, we're also able to tailor STEM activities to those in the home. So we have activities for kaumātua, we also have activities for toddlers. We just want everyone to be science geeks. All right, could we move to the next one, please. 
 
[Another heading is added to the image on the screen. It says Science Tutorials] 
  
Science tutorials. So like Amanaki STEM Academy, we also want to complement what's happening in the school now. We don't take responsibility for delivering the curriculum, and that's the school's responsibility.

But in our partnerships with schools, we supplement their learning. And so in those partnerships we have formal partnership arrangements with schools, and the schools take responsibility for identifying an hour in the school week when Pūhoro has its class. 


And so our [unknown] out into the schools and so it's part of the students’ programme, school programme. It's not a before-school programme it's not an after-school programme. It's part of the school curriculum. And so the science tutorials is, we have a group of tutors that go out into the schools and deliver the tutorials once a fortnight. 

Now, Meschka, who's going to talk to you a little bit later, when she graduated from the first phase of the Pūhoro programme, her and a couple of others, other Pūhoro students, as they entered the first year of university, they developed a company and it's a Māori tutoring company and so they're contracted to deliver tutoring across South Auckland, Manawatu and Christchurch. 


And that's really important to us because we're supporting the entrepreneurship and as [Māori] within the Puhono programme, they're able to then come back along with their peers to come back and support the delivery of the tutorial element of our programme.

Ka pai, next one, please. 
 
[Another heading is added to the image on the screen. It says Study/Exam workshops] 
 
Study exam workshops. So these exam workshops is a really important thing, just like Amanaki. It's so important because there are so many of our rangatahi that are streamed into the lower-level achievement standards, and often they include internal and um, and unit standards.

Now we want our students to also be doing the externals and that means in Term 4 that they'll be participating in the external exams.  

And so we want as many of our rangatahi to be participating in those exams because when they start to look at what the university programmes, there are specific achievements standards that you'll need to do at NCEA Level 3 if you are going to be able to gain acceptance into programmes like medicine, engineering and vet science at university. 

So what we want to do is provide a support and a framework for our rangatahi to thrive so that by the time they get to year 13 and start looking beyond year 13, they have choice. And it's okay if they don't want to do those limited-entry programmes. But it's their choice whether they want to do them or not. 

And that's, I think, an important shift. And I really want to  
 
[Speaker thanks the other person on the stage for their assistance] 
 
I really want to acknowledge the incredible efforts of your school down in Dunedin around streaming, because we've seen the direct impact of streaming in the [Māori] report around streaming and the racist nature of streaming and the the effects that that has on our rangatahi.

Now, what we're also wanting to do with our rangatahi in this programme and our relationship with schools, is we want to flex a little bit, but not too much, but just flex a little bit because if schools are streaming more kids out of science and are not prepared to move, so that our rangatahi can participate in externals, then we'll walk away from that school. And that's critically important for us because we don't want to narrow those options.

We want to open those options up. And so that's of critical importance. Now we have, and I'll show some slides a little bit later, but we have the majority of our rangatahi in the programme of the just over a thousand rangatahi now, about two thirds of them actually, somewhere between two and three quarters of those rangatahi were not originally on an academic pathway.

Now that that's significant because when I show you some of our data, our achievement data, that gives you some context of how far these rangatahi have had to travel with their achievement. But it also demonstrates how incredibly capable they are.

We knew just wrap a little, little bit of additional supports, but also you changed the way that you're delivering to them. 

Amazing things can happen and Meschka is a direct result of that, is evidence of that. 
 
[Another heading is added to the image on the screen. It says Career Mentoring] 
 
Now career mentoring. We know from research that that our young people are likely to move into careers that are similar to those of the appearance or those within their parent’s social network.

So within Pūhoro, the Pūhoro framework is a kaupapa whānau framework and really, that's by design because it's designed in such a way that we expand the social network so our rangatahi can see some other options for their careers and they have whānau who, now their whānau is part of the kaupapa approach. 

They have whānau who are involved in a whole range of different STEM disciplines. Now, some of our relationships, like the relationship we have with Genesis Energy or ESR or high-value nutrition or the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge in NZQA.

These are all organisations, there are many more, but these are all organisations who are able to expand that social network so that our rangatahi can see what they can be, and they can be what they can see. 

And so career mentoring is really important. We have a range of ways that that occurs within the programme as well.

This next one, I just want to the other element of the programme is Pūhoro wananga. And so we have one another that is based on a tertiary and on a tertiary campus three times a year. And so South Auckland has their three wananga, Hawke's Bay has their three at EIT. 

Manawatu have their three at Massey and Christchurch wananga have their three wananga at Institute of Technology of Canterbury.

And so that's really important because while we're working towards providing, providing all of the additional supports to keep them on the career pathways, their STEM pathways, we also want to start to chip away those barriers, those transition barriers between secondary to tertiary education. 

And one of the ways that we can do that is introduce relationships with a tertiary environment and introduce those early. Now there’s one other practical reason that we do that is that we have these wananga during semester break, which means that the labs empty and so for those here who have a tertiary institution nearby them, where Pūhoro might not be. 

That’s just something that I want to encourage you to do to develop those relationships with tertiary environments, because those labs in those teaching classrooms are free, they're available.

And I can say that the majority, if not all tertiary institutions, will want your rangatahi. And so that's just something, again, to leverage off some of the other resources that are in your community, to be able to advance some of these things for our, for our young people. 

I'm just going to show you a little clip of what a wananga looks like. 
 
[A dynamic, moving image appears on the screen with the word Pūhoro in a waka. The text underneath the waka says he waka eke noa] 

[A video starts playing on the screen, it shows children in school uniform getting off a bus. The children and some adults are then shown sitting in a lecture hall. The children are taking their science experiments, a type of water-powered bottle rocket, outside to a field. A teacher pulls a rope and several rockets shoot up into the air leaving water trails behind.] 
 
And so that session is linked to the mechanics achievement standard Level 1 mechanics achievement standard. These are the design soldering and programming of water turbidity meters so that students are able to to look into and learn about water health. 
 
[The video shows a Year 11 student from Palmerston North Boys High, who is involved in the sessions. He talks about the sessions] 
 
[Meschka] 
Oh just every Wednesday before school starts. We do an assembly, we usually just go over some science  problems and what we're learning during the class. And that's going to help us with whatever we need. Sometimes the science teacher doesn't get enough time with you, and it’s good to get extra help. I'm not too sure what I want to do when I’m older, but this Pūhoro gives me kind of an idea or gives me more options. 
  
[The video shows students at Pūhoro and some of their work] 
 
[Naomi] 
This session is Callaghan innovation, and this is the measurement standards laboratory they use infrared gear are measure the viscosity of liquid. Domino's needs to sponsor us.] 
  
[Meschka] 
[unknown]. What I like about it is that I get to be on my one on one with a mentor and it helps me more with science. 
 
[The video shows students in a hall, they are singing. The video ends and the Pūhoro logo is shown]  
 
[Naomi] 
So that's a really important thing too about our kaupapa is that all of our rangatahi know the Pūhoro anthem and that's also just part of creating their identity and that kaupapa whānau identity across the programme. In addition to that, you may see some of the students with Pūhoro collateral and we say that that once you’re patched Pūhoro you’re for life. 

And similarly with our whānau in Amanaki STEM academy, we want to just hang out with you for as long as you'll have us. The critical thread of the programme is identity. That's the most critical thread. Now we know from early Māori parenting that Māori, that children are tapu and because of their knowledge and children were able to grow in confidence. 

And as many early settlers reported saying that, you know, by the time children, Māori children were five or six years old, they were they were on their way to being men by the time some of their early settler children were just starting school. Now, that's a really important thing because somewhere along the line that confidence has been diminished. 

And there have been we know a lot about the history of education in this country. Many of us will know about the history of education in this country as a colonising tool. So we need to reverse those impacts and we need to restore the entitlement of our rangatahi to an education that is going to see them thrive and is going to prepare them well for the future now. 

Sir Mason Durie, he said that if the purpose for education is to prepare our young people for the world, that also needs to include te ao Māori. And if after 13 years of compulsory education, if rangatahi Māori are not prepared for te ao Māori, then their education is incomplete.

And so as leaders, this is our job. This is our job to ensure that the education for our rangatahi is complete. 
And we need to reverse some of the things that have happened in the past to be able to facilitate access to the education that they deserve.  
 
[A screen appears with the heading Pūhoro Impact. The screen switches to a slide with three points. These points are:  Rangatahi in the programme either meet or exceed national achievement rates in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Core Sciences and Mathematics. Rangatahi in the programme are more likely to transition into a tertiary institute Ranagtahi increase in the their understanding of te Ao Māori, and their connection to te Ao Putaiao] 
 
[Naomi] 
In terms of impact, rangatahi in the in the programme either met or exceeded nationwide achievement rates in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Core Science and Mathematics. And that has happened consistently from 2016 through to 2020. 

Now, in sharing that, I want to also remind you of the context of two-thirds to 3/4 of these rangatahi were streamed out of those subjects originally. And so as part of our negotiation with schools, we're putting them back into the subject, those subjects now we've got about a thousand rangatahi in the programme now who are now where they ought to be and where they want to be.

But I think about the tens of thousands of rangatahi Māori who are streamed out of education and who should not be streamed out of and out of education in an education that they deserve. Rangatahi in the programme are more likely to transition into a tertiary institute and to increase in their understanding of te ao Māori and the connection to 

I want to introduce you to this wonderful young woman who is, we just love her to bits, and it has been an absolute honour getting to know Meschka over the years. She joined the programme in 2016 as one of our founding students.

And we just, we just marvel at the incredible young woman that she's grown to be. And we are just so happy that we get to hang out with her as long as we possibly can.

So I'd love to introduce you to Meschka. 
 
[Audience applause] 

Meschka: Kia ora everyone, I'm Meschka and I'm feeling those pork buns that we just ate. So, I am a part of the founding cohort for Pūhoro all the way back in 2016. 

And I'm really grateful to be here with you guys today, and able to share my story about how Pūhoro has directly impacted my life. So, I remember signing up for Pūhoro and it was merely for the fact that I knew I got four days off school a year. These are for the wananga that Naomi was talking about. 

At that time, when I signed up for Pūhoro, I was really struggling at school. I remember I had an incredibly low attendance. I was ready to drop science as soon as my school would let me. I think that was an NCEA level 2. I was pretty much at school to play sports with my friends. I was extremely colonised and shunned away from almost anything Māori. 

And then I started attending Pūhoro wananga. AKA, I got my day off school, and little did I know what I was in for. Wananga showed me all the diverse range of subjects throughout the STEM in New Zealand. It also showed me that science wasn't balancing chemical equations or memorising the structure of cells. It was a lot more than that. 

It was blowing rocket ships into the air and making the solar panel cars. But most of all, it made me realise that wananga was a taonga to all of us cohort of students. It was a day to spark our curiosity, it was a visual motive for us to see where we could be in the future. And it was also an opportunity to discover our passion. 

And on top of this, we also were privileged enough to get a weekly session with our kaihautu. And those were really crucial to my own academic success and made me really really proud to be Māori. Being able to learn in a Māori kaupapa, Māori kaupapa and a Māori environment showed me how important te ao Māori really is. And this reconnection with my culture made me real hungry for knowledge and te ao Māori and this was incredibly life changing for me. 

So I'm so thankful to Pūhoro for not just making me a scientist but also making me a Māori scientist. In terms of my academics, alongside Amanaki, Pūhoro believes that whānau are crucial to our academics as well. And since there's only a 2% representation of Māori in STEM, I guess it's pretty unlikely for us to have family at home driving us in STEM. 

And this includes my family. Science was definitely not a discussion on our dinner table, which was why having this kaihautu and our weekly sessions was so important to me, having someone there who genuinely cared about my education, and having someone that generally cared about my education was important to making myself care about it. My kaihautu also broke all barriers for me to be able to attend science tutorials.

Specifically, I remember in my Year 12 he would wait for me on Thursday nights to finish my basketball training, pick me and several other students up from Fielding, and drive us all the way to Massey University. So we could have a one-hour tutorial with some of the best lecturers in Massey that I soon found out a few years later. 

And so for that, I'm super grateful as well. And I decided to stick with science. If someone cared about my science that much, then I thought I better get my gear into action and start caring about it as well. And on that note, I also wanted to acknowledge Pūhoro throughout high school. They hosted mini events for our family to attend. 

So it was the first time my family could come and actually see what my academic, what my academic success was doing. So where am I now? After 5 years of parole, I'm the first in my family to attend university and my final year of completing a double major in environmental and Māori studies.  

Throughout my years at university, I gained a huge passion in New Zealand's freshwater quality. Which brings me to my summer internship. 
 
[A slide appears next to the speaker showing an invertebrate animal and the heading macroinvertebrates] 
 
Alongside 46 other students and Pūhoro. We were like we were all lucky enough to get summer internships with the help of Pūhoro. Mine was with the Palmerston North City Council and Manawatu and I did a lot of mahi with freshwater quality and my bro over here, Hemi, he is a macroinvertebrate. 

So what he does is he helps us indicate the water quality, the freshwater quality. We were looking at water quality in the Turitea dam, which is where Palmerston North gets all of its water from. A while ago, some really, really smart person wrote a macroinvertebrate community index. So it has all of the species on it and then it ranked them for how sensitive they are to pollution and how tolerable they are to pollution. 

So the bro, Hemi, is extremely sensitive to pollution, so you wouldn't find them in any waterways that are polluted. Basically, there was an issue in the council where there was lots of sensitive invertebrates above the dam, upstream of the dam, and a lot of tolerable macroinvertebrates downstream of the dam. AKA, the water was fairly good upstream and the water was really bad downstream. 

And these macroinvertebrates helped us indicate that. So my job with council was helping this investigation and figuring out why this issue was occurring. So I read all the current reports and all the data they had produced, and soon enough I realised there was no Te Tiriti inclusion and no Māori values in any of the reports. 

But hey, aha, I was there to help them navigate their way through some of that. So then, alongside all of the science, I was also able to contribute to the te ao Māori aspects of the water quality. So I looked at the mauri of the river and then it wasn't hard to realise the significant change of mauri.  


Despite these macroinvertebrates being really small, they’re still a taonga to the water and they also carry the mauri. They've evolved with this water and they’re absolutely vital to the ecosystems within it. They eat the algae, the fish eat them, essential to the life force of the river. 

So after realising there was a lot more to this story than macroinvertebrates abundance, but they were also issues with the mauri of the water. I was able to contribute as I began to contribute a te ao Māori view within the report as well. 

And this sparked my passion for freshwater quality. I genuinely believe that the spiritual connection that Māori have with water is real. And the health of the freshwater wise is also impacting our health as Māori. Being able to understand that everything is connected and that there's more than just a bug under a microscope, that you also have to consider everything external to the microscope.

If everything's connected, then what's going on outside of that bug from the microscope? And if myself and all the other Pūhoro students are able to contribute towards this communication between te ao Māori and scientists, then what an achievement for Pūhoro and also, what an achievement for New Zealand. No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tena tatou katoa. 
 
[Audience applause] 

Okay, so thank you, Meschka. We wanted Meschka to have a little bit of a korero because she's now transitioned through the programme to a point where she's now looking at what her career is going to look like and getting set, gaining some experience around what a career is going to be.

Now, this is critical because if we wind it back the last five years, how much worse off would Palmerston North City Council be without the contribution that Meschka made over the summer? 
How worse off will our country be without to ao Māori lens in solving really important programmes, problems and reducing the impacts of things like climate change on our whenua.

Thinking also about things like Kauri dieback disease and the incidences of whale strandings and how iwi up north and now looking into the connection between the two because of the korero around the two being brothers and so there is a connection. They’re exploring that connection and a discovery that the oil whale oil is being used to cure Kauri dieback disease. 

Now that's phenomenal. But that connection cannot be made without a te ao Māori perspective. And so that refers that, I guess, reiterates the importance of ensuring that we are able to build a critical mass of Māori who are not just technically competent but have that te ao Māori worldview.

That skillset is incredibly important for our country to thrive. Now there are just a couple more things that I want to do. 

I wonder if I could have those first four rows stand up again. Thank you. So this represents the number of Māori who are who school leavers who, who go on to study a degree at a tertiary institution. Now I wonder if the rest of that row could stand and all of this group in the middle and can I have the last four rows of this group here? 
 
[Audience moves around and certain rows stand up] 
 
Now, for those in the Pūhoro programme, 68% of Pūhoro students go on to leave school and move into a degree level programme. And Meschka is one of those students who was impacted in this way.

Now I wanted to demonstrate this to you, to be able to show to you that there are many ways that can attack this problem, Pūhoro is just one of them. But and it doesn't cost a lot. Pūhoro doesn't cost a lot of money because it relies on collaboration. 

It relies on many people getting in the waka and rowing together and supporting our rangatahi to realise their own aspirations. And that includes groups like NZQA, like Genesis Energy, like the national science challenges, like ESR, the Crown Research Institutes.

They have a desire to diversify their workforce and get in the waka and start rowing. So we’re mindful that Pūhoro is only in a selection of areas at the moment. 

We are looking to expand into some new regions as well. But there are some lessons that we've learned along the way that we really want to share. And one of those is access to tertiary institutes. They are going to be empty during those semester breaks as well. So that's that's the practical thing there.

And some of the other things is access the workforce, access industry and help connect our rangatahi into future career, future career opportunities because they want to diversify their workforce. 
 
[The speaker holds up a copy of a magazine] 
 
Okay. Thank you so much for that. Now, my final word is just on the back of the table, Pūhoro collaborated with Google earlier or late last year and and fractured media and we together produced a Careers with STEM indigenous magazine.

Now this is the first indigenous STEM careers magazine in the world, and I've left some copies out the back there for you to take away with you. 

If you require further copies of this, just look us up and we'll be able to connect you up with the folks at Google and share this magazine with this many young people. It is possible there are some really inspiring stories in here about indigenous leaders across Australia and New Zealand who are doing some incredible work in the STEM space.

No reira e te iwi, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora mai tatou katoa.   

Equity in STEM and Pūhoro STEM Academy video (41.18 mins)

Naomi Manu and Meschka Seifritz present on how Pūhoro STEM Academy boosts equity in STEM learning for their community.

Equity in STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

[Male host introduces the speaker who stands behind the podium on a dark stage]

[Host]
Michaela Latimer. A round of applause, please. 

[Slide says Michaela Latimer, Genesis Energy]

[Michaela Latimer]

All right. I've been told to try and cut this as short as I can, cause we're running a little bit behind

Kia orana, nisa bula, fakalofa lahi atu, talofa lava, malo e lelei, ngā mihi kia ora koutou.

Ko Remutaka toku maunga

Ko Te Awa Kairangi toku awa

No Te Awa Kairangi ahau

Kei Whangaroa ahau ināianei

Ki te taua toku papa ko Latimer te whānau

Te taua toku mama ko Morgan te whānau

Ko Michaela Morgan Robinson Latimer ahau.

He pou hapori ahau.

Okihine, e ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā ka rangatahi, tenei koutou, tenei koutou, tenei koutou katoa.

[Slide says Ngā Ara, Creating Pathways. Pou Hapori, Community Liaison Manager. Genesis. With you, for you]

I'm Michaela. I grew up here in Wellington, and I was wondering if you might be any of my old teachers in the room.

I went to Sacred Heart College. If you did teach me you probably told me I talk too much in class, and it's a real privilege to be part of today's event and in the next it does stay here 15, but I'll try and make it 12 minutes.

I'm going to see it. The problems facing our energy sector, the opportunities for rangatahi to capitalize on, and the importance of industry-school partnerships.

[Slide appears called 'An integrated business delivering value'. On the slide is a map of New Zealand and some statistics. The statistics show power station capacity for Huntly of 953, Waikaremoana of 138, Tongariro of 362, Kupe of 46% of that, Mau Nui of 7 and Tekapo of 190. 

The map of New Zealand shows existing LPG deposits in Auckland, East Coast, Taupo and Canterbury.  Genesis has the assets of Generation, oil, gas and LPG. It has wholesale markets in electricity, gas, LPG and carbon. It has retail markets in electricity, gas and LPG.]

So first a little bit about us. We sell electricity, gas and LPG through our retail brands of Genesis Energy and Energy online. One of New Zealand's largest energy retailer with around 500,000 customers, we generate electricity from a diverse portfolio of thermal and renewable generation assets located in different parts of our country. Hydro and wind generation make an important contribution to New Zealand's high proportion of sustainable and renewable electricity.

And our thermal gas and coal generation currently play a vital back-up role when it's dry, like now, and when there's no wind providing the New Zealand electricity system with energy security and supporting price stability. We're defined by our people and we foster a culture of inclusion, where differences are sought after and celebrated because this is the right thing to do for our people and because our business will thrive too.

[A slide shows whio and their ducklings in a river by some rapids]

For more than 10 years, Genesis has worked in partnership with the Department of Conservation to protect and grow the population of our endangered whio or whiowhio. If you're from the South Island, the gorgeous wee grey duck, who graces our $10 notes.

Whios are river specialists, and one of the few ducks worldwide that live year-round on fast flowing rivers feel require clean fast flowing streams and the upper forested catchments of rivers that provide high water quality, low sediment loadings, stable banks, overhead canopy and lots of varied invertebrate communities.

<Unclear>They are a key indicator of healthy rivers and streams. So the more breeding pairs of whio you can spot, the healthier knowing the river is now. It's like young people and needing to learn how to navigate the changing and fast flowing future of work.

[Slide shows an aerial view of a braided river flowing into the sea]

Today, speakers have already eloquently established why we need to create equity and STEM for Māori and Pasifika. Education is a key determinant of a person's future social and economic wellbeing. And students, we know, students who retain one or more sciences and math seem to go on to have greater career and study options.

This photo taken by Emma Willets, is of the Godley River, which flows and selected people before we generate from that at our Tekapō power stations. I like to use this analogy of a braided river.

The longer young people stay in the fastest flow of the river, the further that current carries them towards their potential. Too often our rangatahi slip into the slower, meandering flows and roots of more obstacles that make it harder for them to succeed. It's well established that STEM roles are highly resilient and the changing world of work, and this is how they hold so much opportunity for our young people.

STEM education is something that we are passionate about at Genesis, because we know that almost, most of the roles in our sector are linked to STEM in some way. I'm going to say some quick statistics, and I was at a one an hour with Naomi last week, and I loved her idea of standing the audience up. Plus you're probably ready for a bit of a stand up as well.

So we're going to use this proportionate room of around 400-ish people to represent our energy sector of 12,000. And it's kind of our that's our key energy sector, not even the periphery of services and contractors that operate around that as well. So I want to, Can I please ask how we got here? Can I just ask the section in front of me?

So like the first 5 rows, if you can just really quickly; perfect. Okay. There's probably terrible counting, but let's pretend this is 40 people. Now sector-wide women represent less than 10% of total trades and only 13% of the engineering industry. Now can I ask all but 4 of you in front of me to sit down?

Four-ish still standing. So this is now the percentage of- [Sound of audience laughing and Mikayala laughs] What I love is that your all teachers and you've been asked to do something, you all do it. Right. So this is to represent the fraction of those women who are Māori or Pacifika. I'm thinking you guys can sit down.

Now the next couple of statistics I'm going to use are from our Genesis teams, but they're actually reflective of all of our other energy organisations across the country and actually, in fact, globally, where we've got a huge problem in demand for more people.

So if we were to take this side of the room, about 60%, that's the number of people in our generation size in our business or the people who actually create and make the electricity. That's the proportion of people that are retiring over the next 20 years. Now for most of you, those are where your students that are currently your students, Year 9 through Year 13.

You're saying taking on those roles and filling them in the future. So, for the next 2 decades, that's the size of the opportunity, about 60% in the generation side of electricity that those rangatahi can be moving into.

Now I'm going to give you all a chance to stand up, so please hop off your chairs and I want you to have a go. It's where you think the average salary of an energy sector worker sits. So, I'm going to call it out in 5K intervals. And when you think I've reached about the right amount, you can sit down again.

Don't stay standing just because you're ready for a stand. All right. So we'll start at 55,000, which, by the way, is the average New Zealand salary. So 55, you know, anyone sitting right now? 60? 65? 70? Few. 75? 80? 85? 90? 95? 100? I think there was only 2 women that sat down, just at the back.

If you sat down at 100, you're correct. [Sound of audience murmuring] Everyone else can sit down and just reiterating that the economic and social well-being of young people are kind of connected right? So in summary, some of the problems facing our energy sector are an aging workforce, a skills shortage, and also rural and regional roles, which are often hard to recruit for, especially if there's not capacity being built on them.

[Slide is titled 'Decarbonisation of our economy will drive electricity demand higher'. It has a shot of the Climate Change Commissions proposed emissions budgets 2022 to 2035.]

And that's before I've even mentioned climate change, which is undoubtedly one of the most significant challenges that will reshape and transform our sector over the next two decades. Estimates from the New Zealand Climate Change Commission, POSIT, that in order to achieve our country's commitment to the Paris Agreement, we need to reduce our emissions by 36% before 2035.

[Slide is called 'Electricity contributes a small portion of New Zealand's emissions but is vital to the transition'. The slide has a bar on it. The bar shows that most electricity usage or emissions comes from the Agriculture sector. Next is transport, then electricity, then other industry. There are two opportunities. One is to decarbonise (take carbon out of the air)industries through electrification. The other opportunity is to decarbonise transport.]

This next graph shows New Zealand's gross carbon emissions in 2018. Genesis see an opportunity for New Zealand's energy strategy to focus on electrifying the transport and industry sectors, for example, and getting more people and businesses driving EVs and moving industrial processes from coal through to electricity.

Maybe some of you even have a coal boiler lurking around at your school. These changes are estimated to increase electricity demand by 20% and this means we need to significantly invest and renewable energy technologies and increase our generation capacity. Now this isn't from a verified source, but they're the thing that's doing the rounds in our office at the moment is that there's something like 40 years worth of investment needed in the next 4 years in order to start to achieve that goal.

[Slide says 'Manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata, haere whakamua - empowering New Zealand's sustainable future]

Genesis have recently adopted a new vision empowering New Zealand's sustainable future "Manaaki whenua, Manaaki tangata, haere whakamua" and we're optimistic about New Zealand's future and our role in empowering New Zealand's sustainable future through electrification and the provision of insights, knowledge and advice to our customers, large and small, to help them make choices that work for them in their priorities.

We know that inspiring young people, Manaaki Rangatahi, today to become the energy innovators of the future is an integral part of supporting New Zealand's progress towards a lower carbon future.

[Slide shows a Māori primary school student holding a laptop. The slide says 'STEM equipment funding applications open May 17]

So here are some of the things that we are doing to develop our future workforce. SchoolGen is an integral part of our national community investment strategy. For more than 14 years, SchoolGen has provided free educational resources to all primary and secondary schools.

[Slide shows a Venn diagram where industry, schools and learners meet in the middle. The slide says school-industry partnerships create multi-faceted benefits for communities. Industry benefits are working in partnership with the community, connect to a future workforce, outside-in thinking (unable to translate this idea), employment engagement, exposure of services and sector.

Learners can connect with inspiring mentors and teams, get access to workplaces, get knowledge about the world of work, develop career management skills, increase engagement with learning.

Schools can have more engaged learners, industry networking, access to industry technologies, improved pedagogy, professional development opportunities]

Designed to inspire somebody. Can I <unclear> to engage with STEM through learning about sustainability and energy, gaining the knowledge they need for the jobs of the future. Two years ago, Genesis established an independent charitable trust, the SchoolGen Trust, to provide STEM equipment to schools. As you can say, the next funding round opens in just a couple of weeks.

And we would love you to apply.

We're privileged to operate our generation sites and some of the most special locations across Aotearoa, and my role is to move between those community communities and the teams that work there to do more and engage in their communities. Our local communities are inherently familiar with us. We have pretty big assets. Most of our communities are in those rural or regional places with limited employment opportunities, and through our research and conversations with schools and our wider community, we decided the best way that we could empower them was to continue to deepen our commitment to the future STEM workforce.

Last year we launched our Ngā Ara program speaking direct to create transformational education, training and education pathways to prepare young people and those local communities to the future of work. Sorry, to prepare them for the future of work. Noting that our local communities of Rahui, Pukekohe, Huntly, and Whakaari Moana have strong Māori communities. Our initiatives are focused on Rangatahi Māori.

You've already seen that our sector and especially our generation sites are going to need to replace our skilled workers over the next 5 to 15 years. Ngā Ara is giving, is giving Genesis and our communities a head start on filling those roles with local people. Most of the roles in our generation sites of STEM roles. So, we're connecting our people as passionate mentors in our sites as learning playgrounds to help young people contextualize STEM learning.

We've chosen 12 secondary schools closest to those 4 key generation sites to partner with Ngā Ara program working together towards mutual benefit for rangatahi. This goes based on our and the wider community as well as our business. One of the most important outcomes of a program like this is that the benefits are multi-faceted.

I cut like a whole page here, so just bear with me when I catch up.

Right. And our partnership is also thoughtfully aligned with many of our iwi pattern strategies, which have so much focus on building capacity and capability of the people, particularly rangatahi. I'm going to talk through some of the initiatives that we're running, and I hope that you might get to replicate some of these initiatives in your communities.

So our energy sector underpins our nation's ability to thrive.

Yet our sector is almost invisible because of the way that we've so elegantly and seamlessly designed electricity to just sort of put in the background, right? At Genesis, my role is within our wholesale operations team, a team of 250 who work on all aspects of the actual generation of electricity. And this slide what I like to call Agile families, and they want to talk about what I heard Dr.  Te Taka say earlier, where I rarely hear students aspiring to these careers because you can't be what you can't say.

[Slide shows generation sites' job families. It shows the types of jobs in power generation. Such as Chief Operations Officer. Engineering has the jobs of civil, mechanical, dam safety and electrical engineers. It also has control and instrumentation technicians.

Power schemes has generation controllers, operator maintainers, fabrication engineers, hydrologists, chemists, maintenance fitters, electricians.

Operational excellence has data scientists, project managers, systems administrators and performance analysts.

Environment and community has environmental managers and advisers, policy and planning, community engagement, ecologists and scientists.

Safety and wellness has trainers and safety and wellness specialists.]

And this doesn't even speak for the 800 plus other roles in Genesis that are as diverse as legal counsel, marketing, I.T., data analysts, digital technology specialists, accountants, LPG drivers, customer service and communications, all of which have elements of STEM within them. As a sector, we're currently not doing enough to provide exposure to these careers, and this is what we're doing.

So firstly, we're co-designing educational resources, we are linking these to the New Zealand curriculum featuring big ideas related to the nature of science and recognition of mātauranga Māori as an important indigenous knowledge system of relevance to all learners, but especially to rangatahi Māori. At the moment we are designing them to be focused on wai: water, because in all of our communities, our kids connect to those rivers and those links that they are innately part of that make that they are made up of in things.

And just yesterday I was standing in Lake Rotokura in the rohe Ngāti Rangi  if anyone's familiar with it   And the role of not only talking about how we can bring our young people here, how they can understand this and then relate it back to how we use water to generate electricity and some of the conflicts that exist between that use. We're also making sure to include cool technology and how we apply it.

For example, getting gamers interested by sharing how we use virtual reality on our sites. So basically, someone can wear a headset and they connect it to any expert, anywhere in the world. We're weaving work experience opportunities across our generation. Site teams work placements enable students to experience the careers they're considering and see the relevance of what they're learning at school, which in turn increases their classroom engagement.

We know that work experience is also helpful for pivoting career direction before young people invest based qualifications that have little use or jobs that they realize they don't actually like. Sometimes in working with our schools have encountered deficit thinking with work experience and gateway in particular, where it's considered a subject for non-academic students. And we also find some school teams are disconnect from their teaching peers.

Work experience must be repositioned in your schools to be considered a valued learning opportunity for all students and the best practice we've seen is schools and regions who have compulsory work experience for all students, no matter what career, what, no matter what academic pathway they're on, which helps connects their learning. We're currently working on a major initiative to offer Genesis scholarships to Rangatahi in our local secondary schools.

[Slide says 'We're offering scholarships. Accelerating and enabling secondary students into the STEM workforce. Ngā ara - creating pathways]

Next month, we're bringing together rangatahi at all year levels, as well as school leadership teams, teachers, whānau, Puhoro and others, and our gonna of interest in community to co-design how we can best attract nurture and engage learners in STEM pathways. But the most important voices in that room will be the rangtahi's.

[Slide shows two wahine secondary students. One is wearing a virtual reality headset. The slide says 'We're co-designing educational resources. Localised curriculum resources that help young people join the dots between their mātauranga, their whenua, our sites, our careers and the energy sector. Ngā ara - creating pathways]

We're continuing work experience in the form of internships for those moving to tertiary level as well as those that are in tertiary. And we've already seen some of our secondary school students return to work with. Ask the following summons for those we partner not only with Pūhoro but also Tupu Toa, an incredible organization specializing in placing internships for Māori and Pasifika. Ah, a couple of our interns have been offered fulltime roles at Genesis, including one of my team members was this year.

[We're creating work experience opportunities. Secondary students have the chance to explore STEM career paths. Ngā ara - creating pathways.]

[Slide says we're offering work experience to interns]

[Slide says We're employing apprentices. Positions have been created in our site teams to train young people alongside some of the industry's best]

Oh, I forgot to flick slides, sorry. This year we've also established a Genesis apprenticeship program and we know that apprenticeships are one of those levers most correlated to success in the long term, we set out to find the best and brightest from within our generation site communities, and we were overwhelmed by the calibre and number of applicants.

We've now welcomed five new apprentices to our team, including a direct school leaver, all who have strong connections, in fact a paper to the region that they're working in. They join us and full time paid apprenticeships to gain practical hands-on experience while being supported and mentored by some of the industries best. In turn, they offer us their talents and their incredible depth of local knowledge.

We have a number of other organizations that we're working with in partnership through Ngā Ara  but our principal partnership is with our friends at Pūhoro. The first program through our partnership launched earlier this year at secondary school with close to our . And we're putting more on to Tongariro and  Waikaremoana power schemes and as you've heard that truly transformative and I know I'm speaking for the whole Genesis Fund when I say we are beyond excited not only to see the programs in action already, but just to imagine what their impact is going to be in future years.

[Slide says 'We've partnered with Pūhoro. Advancing Māori leadership and capability to deliver a world class STEM community]

[Whispers] I forgot the slides again. [To audience] The energy sector is obviously not the only sector grappling with the future of work, and I hope that in time we see continued investment from other industries. And I know that there's many in this waka already.  Through STEM subjects. We know that Rangatahi who can continue on the education journey. And so the urgent need for specialist planners, engineers, project managers, policymakers, iwi representatives, government officials and so on.

[Slide has a picture of whio with ducklings]

Young people are going to have distinctly different careers from us. Like whiō they're going to have to learn how to surf the swift currents of the changing world of work. But it's up to us collectively to help try and make that river a better shape for them. If we can keep our young people and that fastest flow by encouraging them to the pathways as well as creating workplaces where they get to flourish, then we together, will have done our job.

And in closing, and I'm speaking mostly to this <unclear> here on my left, I hope that I am sometime soon working alongside all of you. Thank you to NZQA for inviting Genesis to be part of this important korero. And thank you to everyone here who is doing such important mahi.

[Closing words unavailable]

Equity in STEM and Genesis Energy video (18.16 mins)

Michaela Latimer presents on how Genesis Energy boosts STEM learning in the community.

Equity in STEM symposium 2021

Video transcript

Rawiri:

Tenei ra koutou.

Ngā mihi kia koutou.

Ngā maunga whakahii o te motu whānui.

E ngā wai whkama kuku korokoro tupuna tenei koutou.

I'd better finish there because I've not got much time, I'm going to have to really bring this one short. I had a whole lot of stuff I wanted to reflect on; all of the gems that are being put before us today, but obviously we don't have time for that.

And one of the things that we-we need to get to is the invitation to you to share with us what you think you might be able to do as a result of what you've heard today; whether it works or not doesn't matter.

The fact is, if we all know what each other's trying to do, we might for the first time be able to work out that 
the factors for success are these "the this thing, this thing and this thing" and the combos that people might use. So we've had a very strong message today about about streaming.

I've always known the effect of streaming. We've had several people put up a list of things that they think are important and what we did about three years ago when we first started developing the steam data was we were looking at the schools that were performing better than everybody else, as far as the data was concerned. And we colour-coded you. So if you were a school of color, that was a good thing.

And we visited some of the schools of color and 3 of them were on the stage today. Those 3 schools that were on the stage today have got over 80% of equity for Māori and Pacific students in their schools at level three STEM subject. That's a low bar, but we can't afford to put it any higher because that's how bad the system is when it comes to achievement and STEM. And we're being honest here.

I am talking with a coalition of the willing. Somebody used to think that was honest statement earlier today. I actually had that written as well. You are a "coalition of the willing", your allies in the fight against some of the things in the system that stop our kids from achieving as much as they can.

And when you listen to Pūhoro and Amanaki  and you think what they're getting out of kids, it's what we should all be getting out of those kids. If we were doing it correctly, we wouldn't need those groups of people who give up so much of their time and energy to support the system, to do what the system is supposed to be doing in the first place.

So somehow that we have to get that right. And today is one step in the direction of getting it right. Now, each one of you will have a sphere of influence. Some of you will be able to go back and influence your senior leadership teams. Some of you will be able to go back and influence your department.

Doesn't matter what your sphere of influence looks like, how broad or narrow. It's: Are you going to take an active step in something? It's as as a result of what you heard today, you're going to make a difference and we're not going to throw you at that thinking without some guidance.

And, who, do I push something to make that go, or do I just nod to somebody and then think, okay, the nod didn't work so we're back to pushing the button. So I have about seven bullets and visiting the schools. We looked at all the schools who had high equity. There are some schools in this country with over 100% of equity for Māori and Pacific students. How do you get over 100%? Same way as you get under 100%. A few Māori students outperform the rest of the kids in the school.

A few Pasifika students perform outperform the rest in the school. You go over 100 percent of equity. So we went to these schools to find out what are they doing? And when we went to about 30 schools and asked them all the same question, What are you doing? We've got enough schools and enough conversation to be able to say, Here are the things that we could see.


And they're not very different to the things that Puhoroi and Amanaki we're putting up today, which is really reassuring. We all seem to know the same stuff. The first one that's up there, the strong relationships. If you don't think strong relationships are important, you're losing before you start. And how many times today did we hear somebody say, "I underestimated the power of this."  Our kids, if they think you don't like them or if they think that you don't value them in some way, they stop listening. It doesn't matter how good you think you are at teaching. If no one's listening, there is no learning. Therefore you are not teaching. That's the reciprocal thinking. So strong relationships and in the schools that had strong relationships and I can't do too much of this, I can't do too much anecdotal stuff.

But you would hear things like, "How's your mum doing? I heard she wasn't well last week". They know that stuff or they see somebody go, "Hey, well done on your win in the weekend." They know that stuff. So if your school or your institution is able to make those links, you're on the way. The ethic of care. So I can't talk too much to all of these.

I think some of them are self-explanatory, so we can move on. That's the numbers, names, needs kind of approach. If you're thinking of something there. When I look at the sentence, I haven't written it very well because it looks like all the students cultures are being recognized. Actually, it's what it's meant to mean is that all students value Māori and Pacific culture, in the school and I went to a big secondary school that had had really not strong results five years before when I'd been there as part of the ministry.

I went back as part of this with NZQA and was wondering why I was going to the school that had colour when previously I would have warned all those parents who have the kids going there.

"Just think about it."

I was asked to go through the Northern Territory once to talk, to go to the Bush schools, as they call them. And then the Minister asked me to go back and talk to his crowd back in Darwin afterwards, What I thought of their Indigenous education, and I said if I had the power on Monday morning I'd stand outside the gate of every one of those bush schools.

I'd put my hand up and I'd say, "Stop. Only enter if you want to commit ethnic and cultural suicide." That's how strongly I felt about what I could see going on, where the schools value the culture of students. Those kids stand up. So you saw the kids performing in two of those videos today. I think it was  Ngā Pono Waiora and James Higgins and you look at the way they stand, it doesn't matter whether they are winners on stage, they are winners in heart and mind.

And it's the way they perform. You can see it in them. The power to succeed has been germinated inside those kids somehow. By the way, things are happening in the school and high expectations. You know, the thing I think the point or the example of people standing up and you see how many more are going onto tertiary study or further study, study or careers in STEM as a result of the intervention. It shouldn't have to be like that. It should just be happening in our schools. And by the way, when I talk to you, I realize you are the people who are the ones who are wanting to do. The problem as you go back to working beside people that aren't as keen as you are. And we all know the reality of that, but you do have an influence and is it a conversation?

Are you going to tell us you're going to have a conversation? That's okay. Are you going to tell us that you're going back with the intention that you might try and stop streaming in your school? That's a biggie. Whether you get there or not, the fact that you start a conversation might make a difference.

And this one, there's a couple of that on this slide.

I want to explain these to these two. So I was in a large secondary school there. Some weren't so big and some were bigger. This one was a large single sex boys' school, and I had the HOD Maths who was looking very confident. And so when I see somebody who's confident, I always like to challenge and the principal and a couple of other people in the room, and so I say to the Maths person, "Alright, right, I've come back to year 13. I never did math last year. Over the Christmas holidays. I believed I wanted to become an architect. I'm going to need mathematics. Can I go into Math at level Three this year? I didn't do level two last year." And he just looked at me without hesitation, said, "Yes." How many schools do we know in the country that would say you didn't get high enough and Level Two to make it into Level Three, who create those barriers to kids whose lives have changed, their minds have changed, or we could have helped to change those minds for them?

But the barriers exist. And so in the schools that were getting high equity, they didn't have those barriers. This is a clear example of that. And when the principal saw that, I was questioning that he sees, "The thing is, what you don't understand is the support structures would pop beside you. In order for you to be successful, you wouldn't be just left to struggle at level three."

And he outlined that. And that's whereby you people getting together, you can talk with each other about how that might work. And this last one that I want to explain, the disagregated by ethnicity, ah when I point down the you know, I can see all of that on a screen down here, by the way, I'm not just talking to the floor that the disaggregated thing is not uncommon.

If you ask an HOD to look back at last year's results and outcomes, it's not uncommon for them to say, "Our Māori kids got this, our Pacific kids got this and other kids got this and this is what we're going to do about it." That's quite common. But what was different about the schools that had high outcomes in equity was they would say, "our Māori kids got this and this is what we're going to do about it.

Our Pacific kids got this, and this is what we're going to do about it." So they disaggregated looking back and they disaggregated looking forward. That means that they were tailoring the response to each one of those groups of kids. That wouldn't be something terribly difficult for a leader to go back and ask the HODs to do if we had leaders in the room.

So these are the sorts of things, the ideas that we can share with you about what we saw in the schools that are getting really good outcomes in STEM. And the last thing to say, and that was mentioned, I think quite strongly by the academies, again, the strong connections with whānau and also with careers. If you don't know that your kids want to become a whatever, how can you tailor the program?

I had a moko go off to Auckland University with a scholarship behind him this year, and then when he got there they told him he had done the wrong standards. So he had the level that he thought he needed. But he hadn't obviously talked with the people in the careers and guidance section of the school.

The school's a good school, but he didn't have what he needed and we all know that Māori girls in particular miss out and have to do bridging programs to be able to go into medicine, more than anyone else does. Those are the things that are happening that we, the coalition of the willing, can start to bite into. And I'd just like to thank everybody who's presented and shared their gems with us today.

I think there's so many that have come at us, it's probably hard to keep them all on our heads. And by reflection, we might be able to put things together in a way that's more sense-making. But for now, we're going to give you a bit of a bit of time to talk with each other. It doesn't matter who you are or what organization you come from.
You can be tertiary, you could be leadership, you could be a middle management. It doesn't matter who you are. Is this something you're willing to share or you don't have to? It's not compulsory. We're not going to lock the door and say, you can't get out until you give us something. But we are inviting you to now think and as a reflection on today, what actions would you possibly take?


And we might in a wee while a few months time give you a call and say, "How did that go? Is there anything we can do to help press the button?" Oh yeah. Actions like this one. I did the slides with. Anyway, so the fact is for equity. Yep. That you wish to highlight for action when you return to work and share those actions with us before you leave and then we can check in with you, which is what I'm talking about.

And maybe as a result, you know, how many times you come to things like this and everybody talks at you and away you go, it's really just entertainment. [Audience laughter] The bit we're getting to now is the real stuff, because if you go away and don't make any changes or make anything different as a result of today, then have we really had an impact?

400 and nearly 50 people here today doesn't represent 450 organizations, but it's enough to make a difference across the system. So now we welcome you, whoever you are, to think about that. You've each got that little square piece of paper that you can jot down what you're thinking of doing. And then I'm going to invite one or two of you to share with us if we've got time.

[Aside] Got time? Yep. [to Audience] We may have a bit of time for you to be able to share with us what you think you're going to do as a way of enthusing everybody else. So it doesn't have to be big and fanciful, just practical.

Ka pai.

[Aside] Grant What time will you need [trails off]

[To audience]
Anyone want to volunteer? What? They're going to have a go at?
Yes? Is there a microphone down there?

[Woman speaking]
Just ah, Yep. Katie Hodgson is representing Voluntary Skills College. For me, it's about continuing to be a renegade, continuing to be a renegade. So I've been a renegade of the past in my schools, so I'm going to continue to do that because it's the only way.

Can everyone hear that? Can you hear us all?

Anyone else want to share what they're going to do when they go back?
Something creative? different? Maybe?

[A new woman in the audience speaking]
Hi Mālō e leilei. My name's Lisa Mota, and I'm the associate dean of the Division of Sciences at the University of Otago. One of the things that I would like to do is to follow your students when they come to university. So I'd be keen to make sure that we do provide similar or further support for them through the tertiary institution at the university. Kia ora.

[Rawhiti continues speaking] Mālō That's and the good thing about that is that by being in the same room today, we're all hearing the same messages. So when you say support in the same way, you actually do know what we are, what we've talked about and leading to that point, the synergy across the system. Ka pai.
One last one we take before we hand over to Grant, students. One for the student over here. Now we've got more than one mic. That's good.

[Young female student starts speaking] Mālō e leilei.  My name is Stacey. I'm a year 12 student, a part of Amanaki STEM Academy. Um, what action I would take, after this conversation is finished is write to Genesis to give us some internships for summer. 

[The audience cheers and starts clapping]

[Another woman] I say yes!

[Rawhiti continues speaking] 
We're all about making connections. [Aside] Let's end it. [To Audience] I think that's a good point. At which we can close the session, it doesn't mean that the work stops. Probably means it just starts, actually. But it does mean that we're going to be able to hear each other and NZQA sits at this end of a continuum, looking at the results as they come through, you sit at the other end of the continuum leading to those results and then taking them on in the case of the tertiary institutions.


So we look forward to continuing the synergy across those those divides that usually see so many of our young people drop away. [Speaks in te reo Māori] . It also would have been would have been good to have had the full length of time available to have beef that up a little bit more, feel like I rushed  through it.
But the main the main thing is that everybody's got something in mind. I can see you all writing and I look forward to seeing what all of those pieces of paper tell us and and where we can draw connections between all of you who are doing similar things and to see what happens as a result. 

[Speaking in te reo Māori] By the way, this is one of the voices of the people of this piece of land. And and I do think sometimes about Uncle Patr today, when he named the Te Papa Tongarewa. We live off the "Tongarewa" , we, myself included. It's a bit of a shame, really, because Te Papa was just the place. "Tongarewa" was the special and precious.

And I think today we bought the Tongarewa. 

Ngā mihi nui kia koutou katoa e runga i te kaupapa i kau enei i tatou.

Next actions for equity in STEM video (19:43 mins)

Principal analyst Rawiri Gibson presents on NZQA actions towards equity in STEM and asks the audience to provide the next actions.

Questions or comments on the event? Get in touch.