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Download AudioControversial teacher training organisation Ako Mātātupu: Teach First NZ has gone it alone.
Ako Mātātupu puts university graduates into classrooms in low decile schools where they learn on the job with some academic support.
In the past that support came from the University of Auckland and more recently from The Mind Lab, but it has now become an independent tertiary organisation offering a Postgraduate Diploma of Secondary Teaching.
Programme manager and kaihautu Charles Looker says it is able to deliver the qualification in a way that best suits its Māori and Pasifika learners.
“Presentations and assessments look a little different as well. They look like having a wānanga. They look like having a talanoa, our Pasifika cousins’ version of a wānanga. It’s been choice. We’re doing our best to be responsive to the people rather than to the tick boxes, I suppose. Those still exist, but our priority is the tangata, ko te tangata, ko te tangata, ko te tangata,” he says.
Mr Looker says Ako Mātātupu offers scholarships so people can learn and earn.
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