Ua Aoina le Manogi o le Lolo: Pasifika Schooling Improvement Research - Final Report

7. Language Patterns

A total of 5191 students across 18 schools completed a student survey. In this survey, students were asked about first language spoken, language spoken most at home, birth country, time in New Zealand, and parents’ birth country. A copy of the survey can be found in Appendix J. Table 86 to Table 90 below show the break down of numbers and percentages of students for each variable across all students, Focus Clusters, and Case Study Schools. Cluster B (n = 3272) was larger than Cluster A (n = 1192). Case Study Schools ranged from 70 respondents (Case Study 6) to 326 respondents (Case Study 4), both of which were secondary schools.

As a number of students recorded two or more ethnicities on their student survey, their primary ethnicity could not be recorded. We used students’ official ethnicity from school enrolment information as the most reliable source for establishing identity. Due to issues such as the timing of receiving data, incompleteness, and unclarity in databases, we were unable to clean and correct all the returns for ethnicity within the timeline of this project. This problem involved 10 schools, so consequently we do not have ethnicity information for 68% of students. AsTTle only provides five broad categories of ethnicity, English; Māori; Pacific; Asian; Other, and so specific Pasifika ethnicity was not available for one school – which has been coded as Pasifika not specified.

Of the 1685 students we had reliable ethnicity information for, 69% were of a Pasifika ethnicity (see Table 86 ). The most common Pasifika ethnicities of the students were Samoan (30%), Tongan (17%), and Cook Island Māori (12%). The remaining 11% of Pasifika students were from other Pasifika ethnicities such as Tokelauan, Fijian, and Niuean. Cluster A had 75% of students from a Pasifika ethnicity. We did not have reliable ethnicity information for Cluster B. Case Study 1 had the highest percentage of Pasifika students (77%), while Case Study 4 had the lowest percentage of Pasifika students (35%).

For the questions regarding first language spoken and language spoken at home, students were able to record more than one answer. For these analyses a multivariate response tally has been used. This means, for example, that if a student recorded both Samoan and Tongan, they would contribute to the total numbers in both the Samoan and Tongan categories. This type of analysis means the total percentages in two sections of Table 87 (i.e., first language spoken and home language) are over 100%. It is also not possible to use Table 87 to report on total numbers of students speaking a Pasifika language. The total numbers of students speaking a Pasifika language were calculated separately and the numbers are reported below.

Across all respondents to the student survey, 20% reported speaking a Pasifika language as their first language. This is relatively low considering that approximately 69% of students were from a Pasifika ethnicity. This suggests that more than half of Pasifika students did not learn their community language as their main first language, although the question did ask “What is the first language that you learned?” Most students chose to record one language only, in which case they may still have had some fluency in their community language. 12% of students reported that their first language was Samoan, and 6% reported that Tongan was their first language. In Cluster A, 64% of students reported speaking a Pasifika language first compared with 10% in Cluster B. Due to problems with data we do not know the ethnicity breakdown across Cluster B.

The percentage of students who reported speaking a Pasifika language at home was 16%, which is a decrease from the number of students who first spoke a Pasifika language (20%). While students were able to record more than one language the phrasing of the question “Which language do you speak most at home?” may have limited students to recording one language and, therefore, reporting the language they spoke most. As was the case for first language spoken, there was a large difference between the two clusters. 36% of students in Cluster A and 8% of students in Cluster B reported speaking a Pasifika language at home. This is reflective of the difference in percentage of students born in a Pasifika country.

Overall 13% of students reported being born in a Pasifika country, while most (75%) reported being born in New Zealand. Cluster A had 23% and Cluster B had 9% of students born in a Pasifika country. Of the students not born in New Zealand, most (11% of all students) reported having lived in New Zealand for more than five years. Only a small proportion (2%) reported having been in New Zealand for less than a year.

Across all respondents, 39% of students had either one or both parents born in a Pasifika country. There was variance between the Focus Clusters with 73% in Cluster A and 24% in Cluster B with at least one parent born in the Pacific region.

Student’s birth country information was cross-tabulated with parent’s birth country information to determine what percentage of students were first generation, born in New Zealand from the Pacific Region. Across all students 19% were born in New Zealand and had both parents born in the Pacific Region. In Cluster A this group made up 40.8% of surveyed students, while in Cluster B only 10% were in this category.