Followers

Monday, March 23, 2015

Te Kahui Manu Hokai: PLACE 2015, 5th national Maori GIS conference..

A panui from Te Kahui Manu Hokai who are pleased to announce PLACE 2015, their fifth national Maori GIS conference

Where: The Copthorne, Bay of Islands, Waitangi
When: June 10th – 12th, 2015

This conference will complete a northward journey commenced in Christchurch (2009), Wellington (2010), Rotorua (2012) and then Auckland in 2013. We anticipate it will be as exciting and interesting for Māori practitioners and/or those Roopu interested in its application as it was at Sky City in 2013.

A call for presentations will be made soon. Te Kahui Manu Hokai remain committed to being 'software neutral' so feel free to design a korero about what you feel passionate about, whether it is QGIS or ESRI or Google (and there’s plenty of others too). If you feel like sharing what your roopu has been up to in the Maori Geospatial Space; then this is a perfect venue and forum for you.

The komiti is busy working on details for online registrations and we want to get all that information out as soon as they can. I will pass on all their panui :)

Sunday, March 08, 2015

Maori University Entrance dropped off a cliff...

UE pass rates for Maori have dropped from 53% to 36%.

For those who thought having a Maori Minister of Education would help, well, now we know...

Pasifika pass rates are also down, from a shit 47% to a really shit 34%.

NCEA standards were raised last year after concerns on the number of first year uni students dropping out (22% of Maori, 11% of Pakeha). Retention and completion are key indicators of institutional success (and therefore funding).

And while public comments on our Universities are always full of disdain for a tertiary education, I always argue that graduate numbers and diversity are fundamental to economic productivity. A degree also opens the world for our young people, socially, culturally, and - I'd never knock this last reason - economically.

Without tertiary-educated Maori, the so-called Maori economy will continue to be a price-taking commodity export business and the wider NZ economy will continue to flatline.

So, what now?

I'd dump Hekia Parata, pump money into high-school tutoring for our students, and pump more money into university tutoring.

I'd ban salad forks too, but that's just a personal thang...
Simon Lambert

Create Your Badge