8 Principles for Education - the Principle of Best Outcomes

In order to reach the three goals: to live as Mäori, to participate as citizens of the world, and to enjoy good health and a high standard of living, education must be guided by sound principles. Some principles go almost without saying - treating students with respect, establishing good relationships between school and home, acknowledging the dignity and uniqueness of all learners. But there are three particular principles that are worth further discussion if only because they are generally insufficiently recognised. The first is the principle of best outcomes. A guiding principle for Mäori education must be one of best outcomes. It is unacceptable for Mäori students to leave kohanga, or primary school, or high school without achieving the best possible outcome. Unless all students have made significant and measurable progress towards reaching the three identified broad goals, then the system has failed them.

Achieving best outcomes means focussing more on the product and perhaps less on the packaging; it also means making sure that the measures of progress actually quantify an outcome and not simply compliance with a programme, or a demonstration of wrote learning. The fact is that much more work is needed before accurate assessment of best outcomes for Mäori can be made. Such measures as there are, do not adequately reflect the outcomes that Mäori expect from education. The ultimate test of an education system is whether it leads to excellent results.

Measuring outcomes also brings into focus the question of benchmarks. What is the benchmark against which Mäori should gauge progress? The tendency has been to compare Mäori with non-Mäori but that approach presupposes Mäori are aiming to be as good as Päkehä - when they might well aspire to be better, or different, or even markedly superior. Sometimes more relevant benchmarks may be found with other iwi, or in other Mäori schools, or in other indigenous communities, or in the best schools of Asia. Disparities are totally unacceptable in a modern society and inequalities between Mäori and Päkehä should not be tolerated. But it is misleading to use crude comparisons with non-Mäori as a type of shorthand for best outcomes or to assume that Mäori non Mäori comparisons always provide useful information about Mäori progress.

There is a further aspect to the principle of best outcomes - zero tolerance of educational failure. It has been estimated that the index of potential for Mäori youth is well below 60%. If the 174,500 young Mäori under the age of 15 years were all on line to reach full potential, Mäori would be in a strong position and able to make substantial contributions to the country if not to the world. But the index of potential is only around 60%. There are some 60,000 young Mäori who, on present trends, will never experience anything like a reasonable outcome. Instead they will become trapped in lifestyles that are essentially incompatible with healthy growth and development and will struggle to participate in either te ao Mäori or the wider global community. Simply blaming the home, or the whänau, or the school, will do little more than produce a stand off when what is needed is a joint resolution - by all parties - that failure will not be tolerated. Moreover, if for one reason or another more resources are needed to prevent such high levels of human wastage, then the nation must be prepared to act. It is too tempting to find excuses for failure and poor performance and then to do nothing. The reasons might be quite valid, but they should not be used to condone unrealised potential. Instead zero tolerance of failure should become the starting point and the expectation as Mäori head into the next phase of development.