Long-term impacts for whānau hauā, tāngata whaikaha and whānau in education

Tuhoro

In our mind the first thought was always mainstream or wharekura. There was never any thought around special school. Not that we don't support that idea, but for us it was like, let's go to mainstream, let's try that first. Because we've worked with whānau and we'd known a lot of whānau that were forced into going to special school against what they wanted to do. In terms of the aspirations they had for their tamaiti or their tamariki. It was always kind of, oh special school, that's where they’ve got to go if they’ve got, you know, no other option. 

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We were against it. We kind of said, look, we want to try this. This is where we want to go because this is what we want to achieve with Te Aurere. But even in that same process, like we found, particularly with wharekura, there wasn't the same support in terms of resources or willingness by support services to engage in that. Just because of the fear of the unknown. Iʻm assuming they didn't feel as comfortable working in a te ao Māori or this sort of Māori world-view space. So even then, from that point, this is just getting to the starting line. We already said, well that window is closed now. So we were kind of boxed into the special school or certain schools.

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That's something that we were big on and weʻre like, well, where’s the equity in that? Whereʻs the…where are we…how are we not having the option to be involved in wharekura because te reo, tikanga, te ao Māori is at the forefront of what we want as a whānau for, not only ourselves but, Te Aurere.

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But yet there's not the same support or funding that's available there. So we were like, man, it's just, yeah…

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Jess

That’s things like, no speech-language therapists that would go into kura kaupapa. And that's, you know, Te Aurere is non-verbal, as they say. And so weʻd need access to a speech-language therapist. And that's something that we've only just recently found out that there’s one that goes into wharekura now in our area. 

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Teacher aides. Like, you know, we’re starting at the bottom again with teacher aides that are…have no base knowledge of takiwātanga. And so that's an effort again that we need to put in to upskill these kaitiaki or these kaiako to support our taonga. And I don't think we were… we weren't ready for that. Because, in our minds, you know, it's this narrative that was sold to us that if you go to mainstream, you're going to get great support. They already have heaps of taonga in their kura, they have speech-language therapists and teacher aides and all of these sorts of things. So you're stepping into a well-supported environment. That was not right at all. 

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And you know, had we known the amount of effort that we've put into the school, we would have just gone to wharekura. Because then we would have got our reo and Te Aurere would have been, you know, surrounded by that, I suppose. I think one thing that our whānau Māori are really good at is creating inclusive environments.

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Tuhoro

I think it goes back to this idea around the mātua are the experts. So because we are the experts when it comes to Te Aurere, we were willing to push to that very edge.

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There needs to be somewhere we're meeting at that halfway point. But that's just, I guess, the reality of it. We are like, well, if no one else is going to do it, there's no point in us just sitting here waiting for them to do it if they're not willing to do it. Because it only means that Te Aurere misses out on his education, he misses out on all these opportunities. If no one's going to do it, then that's the reality of it. He's just going to be at the worst end of it. 

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To the other point around our mātua, like, we're fortunate, we're willing to knock on the doors, but some of them don't have that courage to do that as well.