Student survey reveals importance of whanau

Tariana Turia PHOTO/FILE

This week I had the opportunity to speak at the launch of Te Ara Whakapiki Taitamariki, a report about the health and well-being of Maori students based on the Youth 2012 Survey - New Zealand's largest and most comprehensive survey of the health and wellbeing of students in high schools. It is a significant survey, involving 8500 secondary school students aged from 12 to 17 years from 125 schools. Over 1700 surveyed were Maori.

Te Ara Whakapiki Taitamariki is an important report, not only in revealing the views of our youth but also in particular revealing a number of trends across the health and education sectors.

One result was very heartening because it indicated that our rangatahi Maori are making some good life decisions. Most Maori students (91 per cent) reported feeling OK, satisfied, or very happy with their lives; nearly 70 per cent of taitamariki reported that they had fun with their whanau "often" or "a lot"; 92 per cent of taitamariki Maori felt cared about a lot by their parents and 98.8 per cent of taitamariki thought it was important or very important to their parents that they attended school.

It was also great to learn that whanau relationships are very important to rangatahi. I think we cannot underestimate the value and role of whanau in our children's lives. I was particularly pleased to see the decline in smoking, regular alcohol consumption and marijuana use among our rangatahi.

I think this survey and the report is important in changing the discourse that we have become accustomed to, which so often reveals only negative statistics about our youth and ignores other elements such as the importance of whanau.

There are other results in the report, though, which are disturbing. Only about half of the rangatahi were able to state that they got enough time with their parents. That is a very sad finding. There is an extremely rich pool of data evident from this report - and there are some very real concerns that are emerging where Maori students continue to have worse outcomes or are exposed to greater risk than other students.

Despite significant improvements over time, Maori still lag behind their peers in far too many indicators of wellbeing. I am deeply concerned about the findings that indicate that access to primary health care and social services is a significant barrier for many rangatahi compared to Pakeha. This should not be happening and is a system failure - and we can and must do something about it.

I think the education statistics may have read differently if wharekura, those schools that teach in te reo Maori, were also included in the survey. Perhaps there could have been a comparison between rangatahi attending mainstream and those attending wharekura, where te reo Maori, Maori identity and a Maori world view underpin the teachings.

The results showed that, out of 1700 Maori students, only one in four felt someone at school cared about them. That is a shocking indictment on the education workforce - or the ways in which our mainstream schools operate. The report goes further to reveal that less than half of the students felt teachers were fair or had high academic expectations of them. What is worse is that the report notes there have been no changes or little improvement in these areas since 2001.

I think one of the interesting results of the survey showed that 60 per cent of rangatahi from areas of low deprivation reported being proud to be Maori - compared to 80 per cent for Maori living in areas of high deprivation.

The results also showed that in terms of feeling it was important to be recognised as Maori, have the ability to speak and understand te reo, to know their iwi, or were satisfied with their knowledge of te ao Maori, students in high deprivation areas outperformed their peers in low deprivation areas.

More needs to be done to ensure that all our Maori rangatahi feel connected with their Maori identity. Too often it is assumed that when we talk about poverty, we are talking about disadvantage in all regards. I wish you all a safe and happy holidays with your whanau.