He kōrero mō te kaupapa ꞁ About the project

The Ministry of Education has committed to developing Tīrewa Mātai, a national monitoring programme for educational settings in which ākonga learn through the medium of te reo Māori (The New Zealand Government, 2024). A national monitoring programme has operated for English medium schools since 1995 (Educational Assessment Research Unit, 2024). A comparable programme for kura in which ākonga learn through the medium of te reo Māori was established in 1999 and discontinued in 2006 (Educational Assessment Research Unit, 2010).

In 2024, the Ministry of Education contracted Te Wāhanga, the Māori research unit of NZCER to carry out a kaupapa Māori research project to inform the development of Tīrewa Mātai. The overarching research question for this study is: What are key issues for the Ministry of Education to consider when developing Tīrewa Mātai?

To answer this question, the Ministry of Education asked NZCER to identify and analyse a minimum of five indigenous frameworks. The resulting study involved a literature review and whakawhiti kōrero with indigenous experts. This report provides details about five monitoring frameworks and three assessment models that we identified during this study. It also presents the key themes that were evident across these frameworks and models and offers a set of recommendations for the Ministry of Education to consider as it progresses the development of Tīrewa Mātai.

Ngā tīrewa me ngā tauira ꞁ The frameworks and models

Ngā tīrewa e rima The five frameworks

1. Te Kaupapa Aroturuki Mātauranga ā-Motu NEMP was a long-running, Ministry-funded study (1995–2010) that was implemented in Māori-medium settings from 1999 to 2005 (Educational Assessment Research Unit, 2010).
2. Te Tīrewa Mātai: A Draft Framework for Describing Student Achievement in Level 1 Māori Immersion Settings was developed in 2008 and 2009, shortly after the discontinuation of NEMP in Māori-medium settings (Ministry of Education, 2009b). The draft framework, which was developed on contract to the Ministry of Education, was never implemented.
3. He Anga Arotake, Aromātai Kura Kaupapa Māori Te Aho Matua is ERO’s framework for review and evaluation in kura kaupapa Te Aho Matua (Education Review Office & Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa, 2014a, 2014b). It was collaboratively developed by Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori (Te Rūnanga Nui) and ERO.
4. Kaiapuni Assessment of Educational Outcomes (KĀ’EO) is an assessment framework for students attending Hawai‘ian-language immersion schools (Kūkea Shultz & Englert, 2021). It was developed in response to a need for linguistically and culturally appropriate Hawai‘ian medium assessments that were of sufficient technical quality to meet the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015).
5. The Holistic Lifelong Learning Measurement Framework was developed by the Canadian Council on Learning in 2009 and was the product of work done in partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis learning professionals, community practitioners, researchers, and governments (Canadian Council on Learning, 2009).

Ngā tauira e toru The three models

1. Te Ao Haka is a suite of performance-based achievement standards that provide ākonga with opportunities to engage in Māori culture, language, and traditional practice, and that contribute to the award of both NCEA and University Entrance qualifications (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2024a).
2. Mālama Honua: A Hawai‘ian-focused Charter School (HFCS) is one of 17 kula (kura) that share a common “vision of the graduate” (Espania et al., 2019). The Mālama Honua community has worked with other kula in the HFCS network to develop sets of assessment rubrics that could, at some point, form a basis for a monitoring model across the HFCS collective.
3. Ngā hui ā-motu are events of national significance that occur across te ao Māori and are proposed by this research team as an idea to explore further during the development of Tīrewa Mātai. We offer this as a way of describing how authentic national monitoring occurs in te ao Māori.

Looking across the frameworks and models, we identified five key themes and a corresponding set of tūtohutanga or recommendations. These themes and recommendations are offered to inform the next stages in the development of Tīrewa Mātai.

Ngā ariā matua Key themes

1. Kia Māori: The Māori and indigenous groups who developed the frameworks and models described in this report endeavoured to establish, implement, and maintain authentic indigenous approaches to assessment and monitoring that aligned with their traditions and learning and knowledge systems. However, all these indigenous groups were required to work within colonial systems that continue to display blindness, indifference, and/or hostility to indigenous people, values, and ideas.
2. Kia pono: In all cases, Māori and indigenous groups wanted to create frameworks and models that reflected and measured their own indigenous values, languages, knowledges, competencies, ideas, and definitions of success. These differ from Eurocentric definitions of success, for which assessment approaches and tools are already available. Notably, all the frameworks also acknowledged the importance of literacy and numeracy and the value of other Western subject areas.
3. Kia auaha: Māori and indigenous groups had significant creative input into all the frameworks and models. They maintained mana motuhake while challenging the constraints placed upon them by government priorities and education traditions that marginalised indigenous tamariki. As a result, the indigenous groups and their school communities exercised creative assessment design, critical thought, and developed assessment and monitoring capabilities.
4. Kia māia: Political influences and policy changes had a significant impact on the development and implementation of all the frameworks we looked at. Sudden changes to government focuses and requirements, and the removal of funding, often meant that the full potential of the frameworks could not be realised.
5. Kia ngākau māhaki: Ensuring that guiding principles and/or values underpinned any monitoring framework or assessment model was considered essential by Māori and indigenous communities and developers. However, there were significant challenges and tensions associated with developing monitoring frameworks and assessment models that reflected indigenous principles, while at the same time operating within Western, colonial systems.