Students have been taught to speak te reo through structured literacy, along with te ao Māori beliefs such as waiata. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Tom Furley
The government's move to introduce structured literacy has the potential to lift reading and writing levels among Māori students in mainstream schools, says an English teacher who is Māori.
The government wants all state schools to teach structured literacy from next year and is spending $67 million to train teachers and pay for resources.
It's a method which uses sounds and phonics to break down and understand words, and was praised by the Education Minister for its use in kura kaupapa.
Te Kura Kaupapa O Wairarapa in Masterton - which has a small roll of about 120 tauira ranging from years tahi to tekau mā toru - is one example of a kura excelling in NCEA.
Its latest results show it had a 100 percent pass rate across levels 1 to 3, and a 60 percent university entrance pass rate last year.
Tumuaki Pip Rimene said students were being taught to speak te reo through structured literacy, along with te ao Māori beliefs such as waiata.
"You're constantly talking about different things around tikanga and atua, concepts around like manaakitanga, whangaungatanga, all that type of stuff. And it can be Tuākana-Tēina so that it's quite supported, small groups but you might have a range of abilities in those groups so that they can learn from eachother," Rimene said.
Education Minister Erica Stanford said the government had a lot to learn from kura kaupapa as Māori students were falling behind in reading and writing in mainstream schools.
But Rimene said structured literacy in a mainstream school would have to be taught very differently compared to kura kaupapa - mainly due to the linguistic differences between te reo and English.
"You've got your vowels with the tohutō on them which are like the longer vowel sounds, we teach the individual letters or the oro and then we teach the blends, so the kuoro and then we use those to teach words and from there they are generally able to start reading sentences," Rimene said.
NCEA figures show that over the 10 years from 2012-22, students learning predominantly in te reo Māori consistently had higher success rates than tauira learning English.
Jackie is an English teacher who is Māori - she believes implementing structured literacy can improve NCEA rates among Māori students in conventional education.
"It actually is an inclusive programme, it actually supports children with learning needs so structured literacy actually focuses on children with dyslexia so it actually covers all areas of the literacy component and it's progressive so yup, I think it's going to be fantastic for our Māori students in a mainstream environment," Jackie said.
She said there were many reasons why Maori students may struggle in mainstream classrooms.
"We need kids at school attending for them to be able to achieve and gain success, so I think attendance is a huge huge barrier with some of our Māori kids. The other one is we don't have enough Māori teachers in mainstream schools and I see this a lot in my work, I'm not seeing very many Māori teachers in a mainstream environment."
NZ Educational Institute vice president Ripeka Lessels agreed that more Māori teachers were needed, but believed structured literacy was a one size fits all approach.
She has taught in both mainstream and Māori medium, and did not think it was a silver bullet solution for improving rates amongst Māori tauira.
She said teachers needed to focus on building a rapport with tamariki Māori.
"They know if the teacher already has a bias against them, you just don't have to tell them, they know that sort of stuff. I'm not saying that's what happens but children need to know that the relationships they build in the school are genuine, authentic, relationships and I think if that became something that everybody did then we might get a few changes," Lessels said.
Lessels said NZEI was continuing to call for greater resourcing to support kaupapa Māori approaches to education.