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Motueka High School hopes a new cultural education centre will help raise Maori student achievement.
The school has raised half a million dollars towards the $1.1 million project, and it’s hoping to get a lotteries grant for the rest.
Principal Scott Haines says about half the school’s 140 Maori students are part of a whanau class that uses a standard classroom as its base.
But there is no space for Maori language teaching , no suitable place for performing kapa haka and no cultural space that students could identify with.
He says advice from Wakatu Incorporation and Ngati Rarua Atiawa Iwi Trust kaumatua was that having the right environment for learning was important to raising Maori student achievement.
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