Govt funding BOOST to remaining Māori boarding schools

PHOTO: Hato Pāora College is one of four remaining Māori boarding schools. Photo: Supplied

The government has allocated almost 15 million dollars towards upgrading the country’s last four remaining Māori boarding schools.

Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson announced the final allocation of the $20 million investment into the schools from last year’s Budget.

Hato Pāora College is a Māori boys boarding school near Fielding with a roll of about 100 students.

It’s got almost $3m from the funding pool.

Hato Pāora College tumuaki Nathan Matthews was grateful saying it would help with long overdue refurbishments and rebuilding the hostel.

“This is our 75th anniversary year jubilee and the buildings sort of show that we’ve reached that age so I think very necessary for our hostel that there needs to be some investment to raise the standard so that our students our tauira have a better experience and environment to live in,” Matthews said.

The school’s roll had also dropped over time which Matthews thought came down to the lack of resources for all four Māori boarding schools.

“You also look since the year 2000 the closing of St Stevens, the closing of Queen Victoria, the closing of Turakina and Hato Petera so you’d say the whole sector has suffered from what I would say is a lack of resourcing and support so this is a great step towards remedying that,” Matthews said.

St Josephs Maori Girl’s College received just over $6m in government funding.

Trust Board member Rakeipoho Taiaroa said an earthquake report done in 2017 showed the school was in need of some serious repair.

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“It identified firstly the chapel needed to be basically closed and that’s been closed ever since and also part of the accommodation area as well as some of the infrastructure, so the infrastructure is still quite old and the new buildings would have come around certainly at least 70 years ago,” Taiaroa said.

He said the current repair bill was estimated at $25m and climbing – so far the school had just under $9m.

Three of the four boarding schools are in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti MP Meka Whaitiri’s electorate.

Whaitiri said it was time they had a massive upgrade.

“Very very dated facilities, very cold facilities probably at the sort of have to repair end at the state of these colleges particularly in the hostel areas. This announcement will go some way to help our contribution as a government to making these facilities more modern accommodation,” Whaitiri said.

So is the current funding enough?

“Back in 2020 when we campaigned on this we declared it in our manifesto that we would commit this amount to helping these boarding schools. Is it enough? Some would definitely argue it’s not but it’s a start,” Whaitiri said.

The $14.9m is in comparison to $855m of capital expenditure for mainstream schools in this year’s budget.