<\/p>\n
\nEducation Minister Erica Stanford.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Mark Papalii\n<\/p>\n
Education Minister Erica Stanford has imposed a near total ban on M\u0101ori in new additions to a series of books used to teach five-year-olds to read.<\/p>\n
An Education Ministry report shows Stanford decided in October last year to exclude all M\u0101ori words except for characters’ names from any new books in the Education Ministry’s Ready to Read Phonics Plus (RtRPP) series.<\/p>\n
The paper showed the decision was driven by concern M\u0101ori words were confusing for children learning to read English though evidence of that was mixed.<\/p>\n
Stanford told RNZ the decision affected only 12 books that would finish the series, after which the series, including 27 books with M\u0101ori words, could be reprinted.<\/p>\n
The ministry’s report said: “Under this option, we would not include kupu M\u0101ori in all phases of the RtRPP scope and sequence for any future books. The 13 RtRPP books currently in development do not contain any kupu M\u0101ori, apart from character names.”<\/p>\n
It was not clear in the paper whether the books would be reprinted.<\/p>\n
“As noted above, the RtRPP resources are expected to have a lifespan in schools of approximately 10 years, so it would take several years for the books containing kupu M\u0101ori that are currently in circulation to be replaced in practice.”<\/p>\n
The document showed Stanford also instructed the ministry to develop a teaching sequence in the English curriculum to help teachers prepare children to read M\u0101ori words from their second year at school.<\/p>\n
Stanford told RNZ that would stop teaching children in mainstream classrooms to pronounce and read M\u0101ori from being “left to chance”.<\/p>\n
The ministry’s document said currently from Year 4, M\u0101ori words were included in the curriculum with increasing frequency and complexity.<\/p>\n
Stanford told RNZ she considered rewriting the 27 books that contained M\u0101ori words to retain only the proper nouns in M\u0101ori, but later decided against it.<\/p>\n
“These are very early readers that teach children to learn to read and there are already ‘heart’ words in there that children have to memorise in English and if there are some te reo words in there as well, then that’s okay and we’ll leave them as they are,” she said.<\/p>\n
She described the decision as the middle position between conflicting advice.<\/p>\n
The minister’s October decision included reprinting one of the books, ‘At the Marae’, as a big book but not as a ‘reader’ for children to take home – something that angered many teachers and principals<\/a> in the past week.<\/p>\n The document showed Stanford raised the issue after “experts in structured literacy approaches” told her that including two different languages in the books could confuse learners and make it harder for them to master English phonetics.<\/p>\n The ministry’s paper said evidence about that was mixed but there was a case to consider the amount of M\u0101ori words in books for children learning to read.<\/p>\n