14/11/2025
TE KURA A IWI O PAWARENGA - HE RETA TUWHERA KI TE MINITA O TE MĀTAURANGA
12 November 2025
Tūturu o Whakatō: Our Stand for Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Education
The board of Te Kura ā Iwi o Pawarenga stands in firm opposition to the coalition government’s decision, announced by Education Minister Erica Stanford, to remove the legal requirement for schools and kura to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We declare unequivocally that our commitment to Te Tiriti is not a matter of legal compulsion but a matter of principle. It is foundational to our identity, our practice, and our duty to provide an education that is equitable, inclusive, and authentically Aotearoa.
We find the government’s decision to be profoundly unwise, and we join the chorus of respected educators, principals, and academics across the motu in challenging its validity.
The government’s justification for this change is based on the claim that the Tiriti obligation is an unfair burden on school boards and “made no difference to raising the achievement of Māori ākonga”. This assertion is not only incorrect but ignores the transformative progress this clause has enabled.
The requirement has been a practical and unifying guide for schools. As the New Zealand School Boards Association has stated, it caused "no harm to have it there, but causes plenty of harm – including to social cohesion – by removing it". It provided a clear framework for boards, as Crown entities, to understand our responsibilities to all learners and whānau. To call this a burden undermines the hard-won progress of decades.
The Minister’s statement separates the treaty from educational outcomes, suggesting schools can achieve "equitable outcomes for Māori students" without the cultural context Te Tiriti provides. This logic is flawed.
As argued by educational leaders, "You cannot create equity by enforcing a one-structured framework that is exclusively drawn from a Eurocentric worldview". Understanding and respecting a student’s culture and history is not separate from their achievement; it is essential to it.
This regressive decision will have tangible, negative consequences for all students in Aotearoa New Zealand. But its deepest harm will be to the sense of identity and belonging of Māori Ākonga because it will add to the invisibilising of Māori culture, language, and knowledge in the classroom. This directly undermines the sense of identity and belonging that is critical for Māori student success. As highlighted by Dr. Alex Barnes, an inclusive histories curriculum offers tamariki a "deep sense of identity and belonging to Aotearoa". To take a step that diminishes this is to actively harm the wellbeing and self-worth of our rangatahi.
This change is part of a broader pattern of diluting our national curriculum. Folding the Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories curriculum into a broader social sciences framework, for instance, "dilutes its power" and "weakens its importance". It risks leaving the teaching of our past to chance, denying all students—Māori and non-Māori—the honest understanding of our shared history that they deserve.
This sudden change, made without consultation, demonstrates a deep disregard for the education sector. It follows a pattern of overwhelming teachers with rapid, top-down changes, as seen in the contentious and repeated rewrites of the maths curriculum. Such actions exhaust the profession and undermine the trust and stability necessary for high-quality teaching. Educators are now left to defend sound, research-informed practice against "pressure from extremists” to delete Māori from the curriculum.
In the face of the Minister’s decision, the board of Te Kura a Iwi o Pawarenga reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the promises and partnership of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
· Our local curriculum, our policies and our daily practice will continue to be deeply grounded in te ao Māori, mātauranga Māori, te reo me ona tikanga Māori and our unique local tikanga.
· We will continue to prioritise equitable outcomes for our Māori ākonga, recognising that this is achieved through cultural empowerment, not in its absence.
· We will continue to build and nurture our relationships with our whānau, hapū iwi, and hāpori, ensuring our tamāriki are connected to their whakapapa, their whenua, and their stories.
We call on the government to reverse this divisive and damaging decision. We urge them to listen to the unified voice of the education sector—from the New Zealand School Boards Association and the Principals' Federation to the NZEI and NKAI—who have all condemned this move.
To our whānau, hapū, iwi and hāpori, we say: we will not be moved. We will continue this journey, grounded in the whakatauākī of Ta Hemi Henare:
“Kua tawhiti kē tō haerenga mai, kia kore e haere tonu. He nui rawa ō mahi, kia kore e mahi tonu.” You have come too far not to go further. You have done too much not to do more.”
Nāku noa. Nā,
Ānahera Herbert-Graves (Tumu)
Linda Rudolph-Maniapoto (Tumu Tuarua)
Eliza Pirini-Marsh
Maryann Waipouri
Amiria Ihaka
Denny Waipouri-Grbic
Abraham van Dijk
Maraea Herbert-Pickering (Tumuaki)
TE POUMARUMARU O TE KURA-A-IWI O PAWARENGA
