Our recommendations

Education for Māori: Using information to improve Māori educational success.
  1. We recommend that the Ministry of Education work with schools to establish a framework for collecting cultural information (for example, a student's ties with their iwi) and other information (for example, a student's goals and aspirations) about Māori enjoying educational success as Māori.
  2. We recommend that the Ministry of Education help those schools that do not have enough understanding about what Māori enjoying educational success as Māori means, by providing better guidance and information that they can use to measure Māori enjoying educational success as Māori.
  3. We recommend that the Ministry of Education use currently available information to investigate the variation in Māori educational achievement of similar schools in similar circumstances and help the lower-performing schools to do better.
  4. We recommend that the Ministry of Education work with education agencies and schools to ensure that there is effective leadership and common understanding of the purpose and use of information to improve outcomes for Māori students. This includes:
    • ensuring that school charters have targets for Māori achievement, where appropriate;
    • having a planned approach to improve the quality and use of information;
    • taking stock of information the education sector has and how it is used; and
    • encouraging the education sector to work together to ensure that staff have the capability to use information effectively.
  5. We recommend that the Ministry of Education improve practices to collect, analyse, use, and share information about Māori educational achievement. Priority should be given to:
    • sharing effective collection and analysis practices throughout the education system to improve Māori student achievement;
    • sharing practices so that schools use information and enquiry effectively to improve Māori student achievement;
    • improving the way schools collect student ethnicity data, which should include updating the Ministry of Education's ethnicity data collection guidance and examples; and
    • improving the availability of important and relevant cost information to inform decisions about investing in initiatives to improve Māori student achievement.