Te reo in schoolbooks: 'Govt has it the wrong way round'

Te Reo experts say the Government has got its approach back to front in removing Māori words from school texts.

It was revealed last week that Education Minister Erica Stanford decided to cut Māori words, except for characters’ names, from any new books in the Ready to Read Phonics Plus series. The concern was that Māori words were confusing for young readers learning English.

However, two experts in te reo Māori and bilingualism told TVNZ’s Marae programme nothing could be further from the truth.

Watch the full discussion on TVNZ+.

Dr Vincent Ieni Olsen-Reeder, research fellow at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, said: “It's because the reverse of what the ministry says is actually true.

“The more we expose our tamariki while their brains are well-geared to learning communication while they're still young, they are learning about patterns and phonetics and grammar in a really comprehensive way that doesn't require a lot of external teaching applied to it.”

Olsen-Reeder’s doctoral research looked at the effectiveness of bilingualism in revitalisation efforts, and the ways bilingualism could remove anxieties around te reo Māori use among its speakers.

He said students in Māori-medium education like kura kaupapa Māori are examples of how kids can excel in literacy across both languages.

He believes the Government has missed the mark and that not only does it look as if te reo is being taken away from “the eyes and the minds” of tamariki, particularly Māori tamariki, but it only contributes to New Zealand’s lower English proficiency.

“All these things taking the language away from how we speak every day, just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Instead, he said there would have been a “real opportunity” for Aotearoa to create a localised structured literacy programme that’s informed by the way New Zealanders actually read, write and speak, which he says has never been done.

“It's always been informed by overseas,” he said, “and there was a real chance here to investigate how structured literacy programme from Aotearoa could have been built in a way that really make sense to how New Zealanders read and write and speak, and all those things.”

He said resources could have been better utilised towards this goal and consideration of Pacific languages taken into account.

Colleague Dr Awanui Te Huia, associate professor at Te Herenga Waka, is currently looking into the intergenerational use of te reo, exploring the findings from the country’s largest longitudinal study of child health and wellbeing, Growing Up in New Zealand.

She said as a “position of authority” in the lives of tamariki, teachers play a big role in how children may value their language.

“When their teacher provides them with themselves, examples of themselves, examples of their language, the way that they're perhaps interacting with their ao hurihuri (ever-changing world) – outside of these confined kura environments… [for tamariki] it reinforces the fact that these institutions see our language as valuable. They see our whānau as valuable and the ways that we are culturally, as te iwi Māori, and all of our diversity.”

She said it was important that it’s compulsory in mainstream institutions because tamariki Māori tend to be in English medium schools.

Consequently, this also requires quality teacher education, she said.

“If we go back to Te Ahu o Te Reo and all of the improvements we were saying in terms of teacher attitudes and the significant positive changes that that was having in our classrooms in terms of identity, and we've seen the research from that, that was totally clear.”

Te Ahu o Te Reo was first piloted in 2019, offering free lessons to teachers to better integrate te reo Māori in the classroom. It was expanded in 2020 to help 10,000 more teachers learn te reo.

The budget for the programme was cut in 2024 despite a glowing independent review commissioned by the ministry.

Te Huia said resourcing public places, like libraries, properly would help.

“Getting some form of integration of our whānau back into these public spaces so they can see themselves in libraries and participate in our language outside of the kāinga, as well as outside of the kura.

“So, seeing it all around our communities has a direct impact on how relevant, how cool, and how useful te reo Māori is - those were some of the three findings from some of our research.”

For the full discussion, watch Marae on TVNZ+.

tamariki - children

ao hurihuri - ever-changing world

kāinga - home(s)