Wananga under heavy fire

Rongo Wetere pictured in 2003 as his institution's growth was in its full glory. Picture / Greg Bowker

Brian Donnelly smelled a rort. The New Zealand First MP was holidaying in the Cook Islands when he came across a group of students from the Maori tertiary institute Te Wananga O Aotearoa. What were 80 New Zealand students doing cruising around the outer Cooks on a waka?

When he questioned them he was satisfied this was no Pacific idyll at taxpayers' expense. The students were learning Polynesian navigation skills in Aotearoa One, the double-hulled waka designed by Sir Tom Davis, former Cook Islands' premier and renowned navigator.

The wananga bought the twin-hulled voyaging canoe as the centrepiece of its three-year Certificate in Nautical Studies, which prepares graduates for careers in the maritime and fishing industries. They learn about handling traditional and contemporary waka handling, navigation and culture and emerge with their certificate, NZQA unit standards, a coastguard day skipper's certificate and a VHF operator's licence.

Donnelly says most of the New Zealand-born students were ethnic Cook Islanders who had lost contact with their culture. He was won over by their enthusiasm for learning. For Donnelly, the incident brought home the wananga's ability to think outside the square to increase participation by groups who previously avoided tertiary education.

"Some of the programmes they are offering are very innovative. What other institution in New Zealand would have even started thinking along [the Polynesian navigation course] lines?" A year later, Donnelly would head an investigation of the wananga as chairman of Parliament's education and science select committee.

The institute, a small-scale trade training outfit which has been around since 1983, had shot from nowhere in the four years from 1999 to become the country's largest tertiary institution.

Its meteoric rise has made it a target. Audits in 2001 and 2003 uncovered concerns about financial reporting, possible conflicts of interest, inducements and resourcing for some courses. But the concerns were resolved through governance and management changes.

Publicly, however, it continued to attract notoriety for supplying students on a correspondence job-skills programme with free cellphones to keep in touch with tutors, for bringing Cuban volunteers to run literacy and numeracy programmes, and for offering free computers to about 2000 students if they completed their studies.

As student ranks soared, government funding spiralled from $3.9 million in 1999 to a reported $239 million in 2003/04 - an amount disputed by wananga chief executive Rongo Wetere - prompting concerns that the wananga was taking extreme advantage of the bums-on-seats tertiary funding system.

Fuelling the complaints has been the wananga's ability to offer many courses free, while its rivals suffer.

This week, Act MP Ken Shirley drip-fed more allegations in Parliament: that Australians were offered free flights and accommodation to enrol in a security guard course; that a car-grooming contract went untendered to a company owned by the partner of the deputy chief executive; and that the Cuban literacy and numeracy course was sold to the wananga by Wetere's fiance, Marcia Krawll, for "an extraordinary seven-figure sum".

Shirley had earlier disclosed an email from Government-appointed Graeme McNally warning that the institute's expected financial outcome for last year was "nothing less than a disaster".

McNally, appointed in 2003 to sort out management and financial issues , said in the leaked December email that wananga senior managers accepted no responsibility to live within budgets and had a "culture of non-accountability and extravagance".

The allegations offer a stark contrast to the wananga's mission statement: "To equip our people with knowledge of their heritage, their language, their culture, so they can handle the world at large with confidence and self-determination. To empower one's potential for learning as a base for progress in the modern world."

But then, it has been a quite a journey from the institute's humble origins in 1983, running te reo (language) and trade training courses in a corrugated-iron shed on a former rubbish dump in Te Awamutu. The wananga founders, some of whom took out personal loans and remortgaged their homes to raise seed funding, wore gumboots to avoid sinking into the mud.

For 16 years it expanded only slowly - to Te Kuiti, Manukau, Rotorua and Wellington - and by 1999 had barely 1000 students enrolled.

Last year, the Government capped its roll at 34,000 full-time-equivalent students, with 63,000 students enrolled in courses of various lengths. It has 13 campuses throughout the North Island, 14 learning outposts, and employs more than 1200 staff. The Te Awamutu headquarters is a slick, million-dollar merging of Maori design, corrugated-iron and wood panelling.

The turning point was a $40 million Waitangi Tribunal settlement after Wetere lodged a claim in 1998 on behalf of the country's three wananga - tertiary institutions which emphasise tikanga Maori (custom) and auhuatanga Maori (tradition) in their teaching. While the settlement allowed the wananga to expand facilities, its phenomenal roll growth has come through offering innovative programmes to those for whom tertiary education seemed unattainable.

With its distinctly Maori learning environment and bicultural philosophy, the wananga has almost singlehandedly lifted Maori participation in tertiary education from below average to an extraordinary 23 per cent of Maori aged 15 and over. In 2002, it enrolled 41 per cent of all Maori tertiary students - but 40 per cent of its roll is non-Maori.

The average age of students is 33 and most are women. Its biggest course, the free Mahi Ora work-skills programme, had more than 26,000 enrolled in 2003 - nearly half learning by correspondence, or "distance learning".

Those using the home-based package use video and audio tapes to learn literacy and computer skills. That package also develops self-confidence and self-esteem. It was this course which, in 2002, drew flak for handing out cellphones at a $2 million cost to taxpayers.

Using a similar home-based learning package, the wananga launched KiwiOra in 2003, a free literacy course for migrants, attracting a further 10,000. Wetere says the Greenlight literacy programme uses Cuban techniques, "in line with our goal of providing positive, flexible, relevant learning for those previously marginalised from tertiary education." Impoverished Cuba has one of the highest adult literacy rates in the world.

Wetere, defending the institute's growth last year, said the substantial growth endorsed one of its key objectives - that of making learning accessible for students. "Our move to provide free courses and mixed modes of delivery is a direct response to student preference and demand."

While adult literacy, pre-employment and pre-tertiary bridging programmes may provide the institute's bread and butter, it offers a wide range of courses leading to careers and higher-level study. It is strong in Maori traditional arts and tourism, has a certificate in social services, a degree course in iwi environmental management, a business school, IT courses, sport and fitness certificates and vocational courses such as boatbuilding.

Detractors raise doubts about the quality of some courses and the calibre of graduates, but even its harshest critics agree that the wananga has achieved a miracle in providing for groups that other tertiary providers have failed to reach. Thousands have been switched on to further education and career possibilities who would otherwise not have been. Its tikanga and auhuatanga aspects are not mere window-dressing. Classes open and close with karakia and most include te reo (Maori language) and kapa haka.

As Ilasa Galuvao, a student at the Manukau campus, told the Weekend Herald last year: "As soon as I came here, people just welcomed me. You immediately get a strong sense of whanau here and a strong sense of belonging, They don't just leave you to stand on your own feet."

Other institutions contacted this week were loathe to praise or criticise the wananga. Manukau Institute of Technology chief executive Dr Geoffrey Page said relatively small numbers from the wananga went on to MIT courses. "Those that do are just fine - we have had no problem."

A university academic, who would not be named, said the wananga had shown up the failure of mainstream institutions to cater for Maori. "Large numbers of students have said this institution has completely changed their lives. It's one thing to criticise the courses, but if they are doing enough to lift people out of a negative lifestyle and change their world view that's incredibly positive. There's something in what they're doing which mainstream institutions should look at."

When MPs on the education select committee visited the wananga last year they found little to be concerned about. "They've been audited within an inch of their lives," said committee member Mike Ward, a Green MP. "One of them said there were only two days last year when they didn't have auditors in the place. They do employ family to run their warehouse but they've done it as a business and they get the best possible prices. They are extraordinarily entrepreneurial."

Donnelly said the committee was briefed by both the Audit Office and the Tertiary Advisory Monitoring Unit. Neither was concerned that any large-scale rorts were going on, he said. Conflicts of interest surrounding Wetere's involvement in a trust which leased land and buildings to the wananga and in a subsidiary which supplied equipment had been quickly resolved. Donnelly said the select committee did have concerns about the number of foundation students going on to more advanced study and tutor-student ratios. The wananga signed an agreement setting an 80 per cent retention rate and 65 per cent completion rate for its courses. The wananga also received a favourable organisational audit last July from NZQA.

In August, then Tertiary Education Minister Steve Maharey asked the Auditor-General's office to investigate potential conflicts of interest over the Kiwi Ora new migrant course.

The contract went to Ora Limited, whose director, Susan Cullen, is Wetere's daughter. Cullen also started the Mahi Ora work-skills programme which she sold to the wananga in 2001 for $7 million. Interviewed last October by the Sunday Star Times, Cullen said the wananga's growth was "like a big red radar screen blaring out", leading to several audits. She had been careful to keep business dealings with her father at arm's length.

"I think it irks Government and the minister somewhat that we have been so successful as an institution ... that seems to precipitate auditors galore visiting us."

Former Education Minister Trevor Mallard told Parliament this week that he remained concerned about funding being channelled into subsidiary companies run by Wetere and family members.

The Auditor-General was investigating.