Ka Hikitia: Māori Education Strategy

The vision of Ka Hikitia is that “Māori are enjoying and achieving education success as Māori, as they develop the skills to participate in te ao Māori, Aotearoa and the wider world.”

Ākonga Māori achieve at all levels of education and are represented at the highest levels of educational achievement and attainment. However, more needs to be done to ensure that all ākonga Māori are enjoying and achieving education success as Māori. The education system continues to under perform for ākonga Māori and their whānau. As a result, ākonga Māori collectively experience worse education outcomes than other New Zealand learners and are less engaged in education. This has significant social, cultural, health and economic impacts for whānau, hapū and iwi as well as for Māori and Aotearoa as a whole.

Ka Hikitia, the Māori Education Strategy, is the Government’s strategy for setting the direction on how to improve the performance of the education system for Māori from early learning right through to tertiary education. The strategy provides a framework for how education agencies will work with early learning services, schools, kura and tertiary providers to achieve system shifts in education to support Māori and their whānau, hapū and iwi to achieve excellent and equitable outcomes.

Ka Hikitia has five outcome domains to support excellent outcomes for Māori learners and their whānau. The outcome domains reflect key messages that we have heard from Māori over an extended period and our evidence base about what works for Māori.

The medium of education

To help us gain an understanding of differences in the educational experiences of mokopuna Māori in early learning and ākonga Māori in schooling, we report by medium of education where possible. The medium of education is used to categorised learners as either learning in a Māori medium education setting or an English medium education setting. When the reporting is done at the school level, the term mixed medium education is also used to mean that a school has some students learning in Māori medium and some in English medium.