Sharples puts new spin on Maori access

Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples has pulled back from calling on universities to allow open access for Maori, saying applicants would still need to meet required standards.

Sharples, a Maori Party co-leader, said this week that Maori should be able to go to university without any qualifications and universities should reserve places for Maori to turn around educational under-achievement.

The speech has provoked controversy, with Labour saying sending failing secondary school students to university will make the problem worse and university vice-chancellors calling the idea "counterproductive in the extreme".

Prime Minister John Key said he was more concerned about improving Maori literacy and numeracy at a younger age.

Sharples said yesterday that he had not meant to imply that all Maori should be allowed into university regardless of their academic prowess.

Instead, they should be provided with sufficient support by universities to get up to the required standard.

"It's not providing entry under any different terms; it's just providing entry for people to attend a student learning centre where they can reach some standards to do a degree," he said.

"We're not dumping them. We're putting them into a student learning centre sponsored by the university so they not only learn literacy but they learn the culture of studying at university."

Asked whether it was up to schools to prepare Maori for university, Sharples said Maori could not do any worse at school than they were already doing.

Half of all Maori boys failed to attain National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), which was "stupid, ridiculous and intolerable".

"So I am challenging the universities, can you do anything about it? It's an idea. Te Wananga O Aotearoa is doing it and it's working," he said.

Labour education spokesman Kelvin Davis said that if the problem was Maori failing at school, sending them to university "en masse" would not fix anything.

"The problem for Maori entering university is that they don't achieve at school. The solution is to fix schooling," he said.

Canterbury University vice-chancellor Rod Carr said allowing open entry for one ethnic group would crowd others out.

He said the real question was not about the ability of people to get into university but their ability to perform once they were there.

Those who failed NCEA were more likely to struggle, he said.

One-third of those who entered university by being over 20 rather than having school qualifications failed or dropped out within a year twice the average rate, Carr said.

"Just because the school system doesn't seem to address the issue doesn't mean you give the problem to the universities," he said.

The head of Canterbury University's School of Maori and Indigenous Studies, Rawiri Taonui, said open entry for Maori to universities could help, but a longer-term solution was needed in schools.

Population changes meant Maori would soon make up about 30 per cent of pupils in schools, so a similar percentage of teachers should be Maori, he said.

Taonui said all teachers should also be able to converse in Maori, as it was an official language of New Zealand.

- © Fairfax NZ News