Paora Ammunson - Chief Advisor Māori, Tertiary Education Commission
The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) says tertiary institutions may lose funding if they don't improve the success rate of Māori and Pasifika students.
The commission's chief advisor Māori, Paora Ammunson says, “If there’s no change we will want to move funding either within an institution or into another part of the sector if there’s someone else delivering success."
Tertiary institutions are drilling deep into data in order to change the way they deliver their services to students.
“What’s beginning to emerge is that being Māori or Pacific Island is in no way a predictor of risk. It’s things like looking after a child by myself, it’s things like I’ve got to drive a couple of hours to get to the polytech, it’s things like first in family which is kind of an obvious thing. A lot of educators know this but data is starting to show that picture.”
Ammunson confirms 2018 is the funding year in which all tertiary providers to give the TEC a plan for the next few years.
“For this year, we’ve identified where institutions aren’t quite getting it right for Māori and Pacific Island students and we’re ring-fencing funding until we can see you understand why you aren’t delivering...success for these kind of learners and then we want to see what you’re going to do about it.”
He says TEC doesn’t want to take funding off the tertiary institutions. However, they want to see change and they want to see it soon because they want to move funding to where it’s going to be successful for Māori and Pacific Island learners.