September 30, 2013
Te Kotahitanga results impress WISE judges
The director of the ground-breaking education programme Te Kotahitanga says a major international award is a significant endorsement of the progress made so far.
Mere Berryman will be off to Doha later this month to pick up a World Innovation Summit for Education award.
Te Kotahitanga is one of six winners of the award, which recognises projects which show innovation in solving important educational challenges and have a tangible positive impact upon society.
Ms Berryman says it has come out of more than a decade of research on the way teachers interact with Maori students.
The international judges visited four Te Kotahitanga schools and were able to see the progress made by Maori students through NCEA results and other success factors.
"What they saw and what they heard were Maori students achieving happy, creative, their cultural identity was firmly in place, they knew where they were going and they were able to sway the judges, that actually, Te Kotahitanga was making a real difference for their teachers and subsequently, for them themselves," she says.
The Ministry of Education will soon reveal how the lessons of Te Kotahitanga and other Maori-focused research projects will be incorporated into a new professional development programme.
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