Maori must reach standards for open access

Maori Affairs and Associate Education Minister Pita Sharples says he wants Maori to have free access to universities but only if they pass a course showing they have reached required standards.

Dr Sharples called yesterday for universities to reserve places for Maori in an effort to turn around educational underachievement.

Equal educational opportunities were a myth without support for those who needed special help, Dr Sharples said in a speech at Victoria University.

"We have seen how the dice are loaded against Maori, right through the school system.

"That is not any reflection on the academic potential of our young people."

This afternoon Dr Sharples clarified that he did not expect unqualified Maori to be immediately accepted into courses.

"It's just providing entry for people to attend a student learning centre where they can reach the standard to do a degree."

Universities run such courses and students learn skills such as essay writing.

Dr Sharples rejected that the idea was divisive.

"A lot of things can appear to be divisive until people see them in perspective and see them actually working."

The situation now where half of Maori boys were not gaining NCEA qualifications was "stupid, ridiculous and it's just intolerable". Action was needed.

He disagreed easier access to tertiary study could be a disincentive.

"Maori can't do any worse than the results are saying they do in schools. It's sad we have to come to universities and put this proposal but something has to be done. . . Maybe this will make the schools look at what they were doing."

The open access of the wananga system had shown that it was possible to take students who had dipped out of school and "fire them up", even if they had a "miserable" academic record.

"Reserved places for Maori have proven the ability of Maori students to rise to the challenge if they are given the opportunity."

He would be pushing the plan with the Government and saw it as part of a long-term goal to set up a Maori education authority and Maori language excellence centre, Dr Sharples said yesterday.

Prime Minister John Key said he expected to debate the issue with Dr Sharples, but he viewed it as more important that the Government resolve underlying issues of poor literacy and numeracy.

"He's given a perspective and he's fully entitled to do that," he said of Dr Sharples.

"Maori need solutions to a problem, not a problem disguised as a solution," he said.

"The problem is that they don't achieve at school. The solution is to fix schooling."

Mr Davis said the May budget slashed $94.3 million from education over the next four years for tertiary literacy and numeracy programmes.

Nearly $70m of that was for adult and community education courses.

"These programmes – provided through polytechnics, university, wananga and the like – are exactly what is required to help more New Zealanders of all ethnicities go on to gain tertiary qualifications and better jobs."

Labour MP Shane Jones, who was educated at Harvard, said Dr Sharples' call only deepened the sense of Maori as victims.

"This notion that we can make every kid into an astrophysicist without addressing basic literacy and numeracy and other learning impediments which have to be addressed well before they go to university show he's more interested in cheap rhetoric."

University of Auckland vice-chancellor Professor Stuart McCutcheon told Radio New Zealand a key point of secondary school was to prepare students for tertiary education.

"I think the important thing is to understand the nature of the problem here," Prof McCutcheon said.

"I think we all agree with Dr Sharples that there is a significant gap in New Zealand's education system as far as Maori and also Pacific students are concerned."

The issue was resources to get tertiary institutions and schools to work together to close the gap.

Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Maori Development Faculty history professor Paul Moon said Maori students needed to be able to meet the same standards as other students.

"It can set up students to think 'well, we get access to a course, we therefore fully intend to pass it'. And of course they might not have the right prerequisites to do that," NewstalkZB reported.

Dr Moon said Maori were increasingly involved in tertiary education.

"In the past of course there's always been the complaint of underachievement, and it has been a concern.

"But I think things are very rapidly changing and we may see in just a couple of generations that Maori that will be over-represented in universities, which will be a good thing."

AUT vice-chancellor Derek McCormack told the New Zealand Herald he agreed with Dr Sharples that reserved places in universities had proven the ability of Maori students to rise to the challenge if they were given the opportunity.

The current method of capping student numbers was the problem, Prof McCormack said.

AUT's percentage of Maori students was roughly equivalent to the Maori population of the region – 10 percent – and had a success rate of 77 percent, while the university's overall average was 81 percent, he said.

This afternoon the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors' Committee issued a statement saying universities were already active running programmes to ensure increased Maori participation and achievement in university education.

"Above all universities must ensure that Maori students are properly prepared for university-level study," committee chairman Professor Roger Field said.

"It is counterproductive in the extreme to set up any group in society to fail at the highest level of the education system."

He said numbers had been improving but funding caps limited growth.

- By TRACY WATKINS and MARTIN KAY, Dominion Post, with NZPA

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