Youth parliament > Press gallery > Maori Affairs select committee by Antonia Anisy

Maori Affairs select committee by Antonia Anisy

Given the challenge of the relevant youth issue of the retention rate of students in upper secondary school and the disparities faced between Maori and non-Maori students, a Maori Affairs select committee of informed and conversant students pertinent questions to selected officials from the Treasury, YouthLaw, Ministry of Education and Te Puni Kokiri (Ministry of Maori Development) and consequently addressed the economic, legal, cultural and, naturally, educational concerns during the public session of this select committee on Monday 9th July.

By Antonia Anisy

Given the challenge of the relevant youth issue of the retention rate of students in upper secondary school and the disparities faced between Maori and non-Maori students, a Maori Affairs select committee of informed and conversant students pertinent questions to selected officials from the Treasury, YouthLaw, Ministry of Education and Te Puni Kokiri (Ministry of Maori Development) and consequently addressed the economic, legal, cultural and, naturally, educational concerns during the public session of this select committee on Monday 9th July.

In this first opening meeting, the select committee began their procedures to examine this pressing matter in more detail than is possible than in the House of Representatives and enabled the public to have direct viewing of this parliamentary process.

Each speaker revolved around paramount key messages that often directly reflected the nature of their organisation. Consequently, the Treasury official brought forward the proposal that dealt with maximising the budgeting associated with this topic and stated the country is “more likely to have a cost effective solution to this problem by investing in earlier childhood learning”.

However, issues which are not directly involved with finance were more widely discussed, in particular that of the “range of government policies” dealing with this issue including, but not limited too, STAR (Secondary Tertiary Alignment Resource) and Gateway courses, but also how the flexibility of NCEA has promoted a higher retention rate. Flexibility was a primary solution from the Treasury.

“Schools have quite a lot of flexibility at the moment,” suggests Treasury official, “but there will be more flexibility in the future.” From this, Youth MPs began to view this as a viable option that was extensively portrayed in the later questioning.

Other initiatives conversed over was financial incentives as per the policy instigated in the United Kingdom, raising the education leaving age to 18 which was also an brought forward by the UK and the predicament of the correlation between socio-economic /ethnicity status and education levels which was the principal issue in relation to Maori Affairs.

YouthLaw explored and highlighted the disproportional percentage of Maori students getting “kicked out” of school in all four forms (stand downs, suspensions, extended suspensions and expulsions) and also the consequential penalties if this. “Young people most at risk are not those who leave school by choice” states YouthLaw official,” but those who are kicked out.”

And the numbers are skyrocketing in all ethnic groups. In 2006, an alarming 2500 students were suspended and over 22,000 stood down with 30% of suspension cases leading to exclusion or expulsion.

The YouthLaw official declares “I think the use of exclusion or expulsion are was over used” and openly suggested the association between those removed from school and other social issues later in life such as crime.

With Maori students being over-represented in these statistics, the Youth MP’s who asked insightful questions to deal with the current issue actively processed the information and reflected this with their insightful questions which provided relevant data for their issue.

Ministry of Education official was more inclined towards how the issue affects students in general as opposed to merely its impact on the Maori population. General information was provided to the MPs on the scrutiny of early exemption and expanded on the governmental initiative programmes.

The complex relationship between teacher, home and student life was a sophisticated discussion with Youth MPs really coming out and becoming more engaged in the issue. The paramount point developed from this discussion was “you don’t want to rely on the law to force a student to stat in school”. It’s evident that for true success to arise out of schooling, students must want to continue to learn.

With the initial processes of the Maori Affairs Select Committee underway, the Youth MPs are now armed with suitable material from discussion to work towards a conclusion. From the positive response in this direction from the MPs it is apparent that a final proposal will be based upon the Maori Potential Approach that is based upon the fact that the Maori people do in fact value their education and the demand for more Maori education from Maori people emphasises this.

The likely outcome of the proposal due later this week will without doubt be based around the four pillars recommended by a Te Puni Kokiri official. The select committee are under coercion to pass a suitable proposal by Wednesday afternoon before the conclusion of Youth Parliament 2007.

Top of page