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Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox is defending the charter schools experiment, despite the failure of a Northland kura hourua.
Te Pumanawa o te Wairua in Whangaruru has been told it must close its doors in March, after a special Education Review Office audit commissioned by Education Minster Hekia Parata found it had been unable to raise the standard of teaching and learning for its 39 pupils.
Ms Fox says there are a lot of mainstream schools around the country that aren’t working, but they’re not closed down.
She says the Maori Party supports charter schools because iwi say they want the opportunity to run schools in a tikanga Maori way, whether it’s kura kaupapa, kura a iwi or the new kura hourua.
"Maori were only succeeding at 48 percent in schools and we described that as being under-served by the schooling sector rather than Maori failing in the schools because where where culture, language and identity are upheld in a kura environment, the students do very well," Ms Fox says.
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