Our School
Te Tiriti o
Waitangi
Te Tiriti o Waitangi is embedded in our policies and vision and, more importantly, in how we lead our school. We don’t get everything right and we recognise that a lot more work needs to be done, but we genuinely value the Treaty as the foundation for a healthy nation.
We are comfortably multicultural in a bicultural system: Māori and all other cultures. We recognise that European culture has become dominant and that work needs to be done to restore the place of Māori culture.
Examples of actions we take include:
- Not making any key schoolwide decisions without engaging Māori (mana whenua, tauira and staff)
- Partnering with, and consciously welcoming guidance from, Māori / mana whenua wherever possible
- Ensuring te reo Māori, te ao haka, and raranga learning is available to any student who wants to learn it
- Ensuring learning in all areas reflects and values mātauranga Māori and committing to growing tikanga Māori in all aspects of how we do things
- Maintaining and valuing a space where Māori culture is prevalent (Kākāpōtahi)
- A commitment to ensuring that Māori culture – te ao Māori – can be felt in all parts of the school through language, design and tikanga
- Ensuring that school leaders learn at least basic tikanga, te reo and mātauranga Māori and encouraging all staff to do the same
- As far as possible, ensuring the school has Māori staff in a range of roles able to connect with tauira Māori
- Valuing and adapting teaching practices that work well for tauira Māori, such as those in Tātaiako
- Valuing and working towards making real our cultural narrative.
