Today the media monitoring came up with a Whakatane Beacon story about a new Pouarahi (CE) for Te Korowai Aroha O Aotearoa, a national non-government Maori education and training authority. I’d never heard of them before, so I had a quick look into them and found some interesting things. Here’s a summary from their site.

Te Korowai Aroha o Aotearoa is a Pu Wananga (Indigenous Qualifications Authority) committed to assisting whânau, hapû and iwi in the validation of their belief systems, values and practices. Over the last sixteen years Te Korowai Aroha o Aotearoa has established Te Manatu Maori Tuku Tohu (Indigenous Qualifications Framework) .

They are a substantial organisation, with 32 iwi organisations subscribing to them and about $1.4m in turnover in the 2007 year - they seem to contract directly to government agencies rather than seek TEC funding and NZQA registration. They’re currently reviewing Te Manatu Maori Tuku Tohu, so there’s not too much on their website about it.

If you’re still reading this, you might be wondering why I’m writing about this organisation – well, it’s because the organisations that operate alongside the formal education system can tell us a bit about what is crowded out by all the regulations and conventions. And I like it when people just claim phrases like “Indigenous Qualifications Framework” and get on with their own thing, rather than worrying what NZQA or someone might say about it. Life’s more interesting with some diversity.

(Note – does anyone know where I can get macrons for WordPress? This story exposed the lack of them!)