KEY POINTS:
More New Zealand-born Samoans are losing the language of their parents because of a growing shortage of places in Samoan-language preschools.
Details of the 2006 Census for Pacific peoples, published yesterday, show only 44 per cent of NZ-born Samoans can now speak Samoan, down from 48 per cent five years before.
Only 24 per cent of Tokelauans, 11 per cent of Niueans, 6 per cent of ethnic Fijians and 5 per cent of Cook Islands Maori born in New Zealand can now speak their parents' native languages.
Only New Zealand-born Tongans registered an increase in the proportion who can speak Tongan - up 1 per cent to 44 per cent.
The figures for Samoan are particularly important because Samoans make up almost half of New Zealand's total Pacific population of 266,000.
New Zealand's Samoan population of 131,000 is now more than half of the combined population of 242,000 in Western Samoa and American Samoa.
Manukau City alone accounts for a third of both the Samoan and total Pacific populations in New Zealand, with another third in the rest of the Auckland region.
Manukau-based Samoan educator Sala Faasaulala Tagoilelagi-Leota said Samoan parents wanted their children to learn Samoan, but were frustrated by a shortage of Samoan-language preschools.
"There are about 86 licensed Pasifika early childhood education centres in Auckland, and the majority are in Manukau," she said. "The biggest issue is participation. Many children are not in the centres, and that's because our centres are full. There are huge waiting lists - not just in the Pasifika centres but in the mainstream too, but the preference of the Pasifika parents is for Pasifika centres."
Mrs Leota has run an early childhood National Diploma of Teaching Pasifika programme in an Auckland University of Technology outpost behind the Manukau shopping mall since 2004.
The first-year intake of the three-year programme has grown from 22 in the inaugural year to 62 this year. Final-year students are snapped up by Pacific preschools even before they finish.
"We've just had them come back from practicums and most of them have been offered jobs," Mrs Leota said.
She said government funding was available for more Pacific preschools and the major constraint, apart from trained teachers, was land. An early childhood "summit" was held in Manukau last month to solve the problem.
"There is negotiation with Manukau City Council for land," she said.
"The biggest problem is in Manurewa and south of there. There is only one Samoan centre in Manurewa and a huge Samoan community there."
She said there were also only one preschool each in the whole Auckland region for Tokelauans, Tuvaluans and ethnic Fijians.
The situation is especially dire for people from Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, all constitutionally associated with New Zealand, because there are now more of their people living in New Zealand than at home - about seven times the number in Tokelau, four times the number in the Cooks and 11 times the number in Niue.
The census shows a growing share of the Pacific population has now been born in New Zealand in all ethnic groups except Tokelauans and ethnic Fijians, where immigration has increased in recent years.
More than 90 per cent of all Pacific groups in New Zealand can speak English. For Samoans, the English-speaking proportion has grown from 84 per cent to 91 per cent in the past decade.
Just over 80 per cent of Pacific people in New Zealand identify as Christian, compared with 53 per cent of the total population.
Among the Pacific Christians, Catholics have overtaken the Presbyterian/Congregational group for the first time in the latest Census, with 49,143 followers against 48,321 for the Presbyterian/Congregational group and 32,271 Methodists.
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