AUCKLAND: The Maori Party and ACT are at odds whether schools should be forced to offer Maori language as a subject. The Maori Party wants to make Maori language a subject compulsorily available in all schools by 2015 but students would not be required to take the subject. Around 200 Te Reo (Maori language) speakers would be needed to teach if the policy was to go through, the Maori Party estimates. Maori Party Education Spokesman, Te Ururoa Flavell said “There's been a call from Maori parents that it is not available even at secondary school level.” “It relies on the school being able to decide whether they'll have it or not, and for us, that's not good enough especially if we are talking about the survival of one of the official languages of this country.” “We have an educational crisis for Maori at this point in time, we know that 41 per cent of Maori girls and 40 per cent of Maori boys don't even get to level two (of NCEA).” ACT Leader, Don Brash opposes the policy saying “I think it's totally appropriate for people to learn Te Reo if they want to but to make it compulsory I think would be totally inappropriate.” Brash said learning languages such as Spanish and Chinese were more important to the country's future and that Te Reo was “substantially irrelevant”. Flavell said he expected such comments from Brash and added, “Once upon a time everybody did a big huge jump up and down around singing the national anthem in Maori language. Look where we are now, where everybody joins in.” BM
