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Educate for Pacific peoples’ development and success

Refer to Interim Statement of Tertiary Education Priorities for Strategy 5

“But my friends, my brothers and sisters of the Pacific, we know who we are. We carry in our hearts the knowledge that we are the bearers of a proud legacy that surely marks us as a people of strength, of courage and will. We have survived in our aquatic continent through many centuries. We survived the onslaught of the so-called fatal impact, and what became the most wrenching era of change since men and women first walked the earth. And now you, here in New Zealand, and we in the islands, stand at the threshold of the third millennium. And we all ask: how must we chart our course to ensure we keep faith with the generations of the past and those to come?” Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Opening Address, Pacific Vision International Conference, 1999

Where do we want to be by 2007?

By 2007, the goals of the Pasifika Education Plan will have been achieved, and both the participation and achievement of Pacific peoples will be significantly higher. The tertiary education system will have developed a greater shared sense of responsibility for understanding and meeting the needs of Pacific peoples and will ensure that more Pacific students gain high-level generic and specialist skills, become effective participants in their communities and key contributors to both Pacific peoples’ and New Zealand’s social wellbeing and economic development.

Pasifika Education Plan

In 2001, the Minister of Education released the Government’s Pasifika Education Plan, to increase Pacific achievement in all areas of education through increasing participation, improving retention and focusing on effective teaching strategies. The Plan set the Government’s goals and targets for Pasifika education, which were accompanied by a range of initiatives and capacity building strategies to ensure the goals are achieved.

In tertiary education, the focus of the Plan is on increasing participation and achievement, improving retention and encouraging higher levels of study. The following goals were set:

significantly increasing Pacific students’ participation in tertiary education at all levels;
significantly improving Pacific students’ achievement in tertiary education – closing the gaps with non-Pacific students completely in 20 years;
significantly increasing opportunities for Pacific adults to access adult education and community learning, and specific adult literacy programmes over the next five years.

Short-term targets were also set, to measure progress in achieving those goals:

Pacific peoples making up 5.3% of TEI students by 2002, 6% of TEI students by 2004, and 6.6% of TEI students by 2006;
the number of Pacific peoples graduating at diploma level and above increases every year, resulting in 5% of total graduates being Pacific peoples by 2002, 5.6% by 2004 and 6.2% by 2006.

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