9 Principles for Education - the Principle of Integrated Action

The principle of integrated action recognises the multiple players in education. Success or failure is the result of many forces acting together - school and community; teachers and parents; students and their peers; Māori and the State. Lives in New Zealand are too closely intertwined to pretend that action in one sphere does not have repercussions in another. Unless there is some platform for integrated action, then development will be piecemeal and progress will be uneven.

Not only is there room for greater co-operation between institutions such as homes and the school, but there is also a need for better co-ordination across sectors. Education policies by themselves will not overcome the effects of poor housing, or unsafe streets, or alienation from customary land, or low incomes, or polluted environments, or physical and mental abuse. Nor does it make sense to talk about the knowledge economy and the knowledge wave if access to higher centres of learning is conditional upon loans that are often higher than parents would have contemplated for a home mortgage. Across the range of policies and programmes - outside the formal education sector as much as within it - there needs to be some consistency and a shared sense of direction. Messages about the value of education will not be well received where deculturation, loss of identity, unemployment and indifference prevail. Education by itself will not be a panacea for all Māori ills.

One of the promises of iwi development was the opportunity to develop programmes that superseded sectoral development. In the 1980s runanga and Māori Trust Boards recognised only too clearly the impact of one set of circumstances on the other and attempted to work in a way that integrated the concerns of education with housing or economic development or Matua Whangai, or Kohanga Reo, or marae subsidies. It made sense but generally received little support from a State which was so heavily sectorised that cross-sectoral co-operation was nigh impossible. Strengthening Families and the Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy may be exceptions but one of the ongoing concerns of Māori development is the risk of piecemeal development that occurs when a sector by sector approach is taken. Indeed if the Hui Taumata Mātauranga had not been able to recognise the impacts of socio-economic, political and attitudinal factors on education, then it would have glossed over a key principle for future progress - integrated action.