Two Manawatū educators who helped establish a school that supports Māori students to thrive, are taking up a new challenge in Auckland. George Heagney reports.
Long-time senior leaders at Manukura, Nathan Durie and Yvette McCausland-Durie, have built one legacy and are moving on to start another.
The husband and wife helped found the Palmerston North special character school in 2005, then known as Tu Toa, to give Māori students a system to succeed in.
It uses sport and Māori culture to drive change for students and has produced numerous high-achieving students in sport, academics and cultural activities.
Now the pair are moving to Bombay near Auckland to reopen the historic Māori boys boarding school St Stephen’s School, also known as Tīpene, which closed in 2000 because of concerns for students’ health and safety, and its management.
While they both say they are ready for a new challenge, principal Durie leaves Manukura with a sense of sadness and pride.
He is comfortable with the hands the school will be left in. Ilane Durie, his cousin’s wife, will take over as the new tumuaki (principal).
It is an exciting time as the school’s new build at Massey University will be completed next year, a project that was given Government funding in 2018.
Manukura has been in unused buildings at the old teachers’ college site in Hokowhitu since it started.
Massey sold the site to developers in 2016 and a residential suburb is being built. The buildings Manukura started in have been knocked down and the ones they are in now are destined for demolition.
The new site, which will open at Easter weekend, will be purpose built for Manukura and have sporting facilities, so the students won’t have to trek around town for training as much as they do now. They will also be able to host events and tournaments.
“It ensures we build in some of those messages around education and health and wellness,” Durie says.
“That’s the purpose, we never wanted to just open a school, we wanted to open a kaupapa, like a project, this is a bigger purpose.”
It will have two indoor courts and one outdoor court, a wharekai (dining hall) and two big learning spaces, all with big glass windows. An astroturf is planned for the future.
The role is capped at 180 now, but once the new school opens the cap will increase to 300.
Part of having the new school on the university grounds is a conduit for whānau to engage in education.
Many of the students come from out of town – “regions that provide poorly for Māori, those are really big magnets towards this place” – and are billeted, but often the whānau follows and moves to Palmerston North.
Beginnings
While he was working to start the school, Durie met with his uncle, Sir Mason Durie, a highly regarded advocate for Māori and public health, as well as people such as Dr Farah Palmer, Sir Tamati Reedy, Tiwana Tibble, Dennis Emery and Dick Garrett.
Having people of that calibre on board, particularly Sir Mason Durie, gave them the confidence to push ahead when faced with challenges and helped get people on board.
The school was established under the umbrella of Ngāti Tahuriwakanui, a hapū of Ngāti Kauwhata in Feilding, giving Māori a voice in the decisions.
With 10 students in the first year, they moved into the unused buildings and used second-hand desks and chairs.
“We bought [the school] for the price of $2, which we never actually paid. [Massey senior leader] Ian Warrington said ‘keep it in your pocket you might need it’. People could see the potential of it.”
When the school opened, it couldn’t officially call itself a school because of Ministry of Education rules. Durie had to take on other work to earn money.
“For the first six, seven, eight years, nobody got paid in this place.”
Under the guise of students being involved with elite sport, they operated through the correspondence school Te Kura.
McCausland-Durie says the only funding available then for Māori education was for students at risk and there was nothing to recognise potential.
She drove the back blocks of Wairoa to pick up one of the students and seven of the others were relatives.
Durie says while they were starting out they were checked multiple times by education officials and their results were questioned because it was thought there was no way they could be that good.
The students were dedicated and others came as word spread, as did tutors. Some students weren’t succeeding in mainstream education, but began to flourish at Tu Toa and Manukura.
McCausland-Durie, who has coached the Central Pulse netball team and been a Silver Ferns assistant coach, says schools are happy to celebrate athletes’ achievements, but often there is no support academically.
At Manukura, they structure students’ work around their sporting commitments.
“They can be excellent on Saturday and be equally excellent from Monday to Friday. Sport is that catalyst to pull them together.”
In 2013 there was a split, or a rebranding as Durie and McCausland-Durie call it, which they remember as a stressful time.
They stayed at the Hokowhitu site and became Manukura, while one of the other founders, Durie’s brother Ra, was involved in setting up a new school, Tai Wananga Tu Toa, in Aokautere.
Māori education
Manukura has now had years of academic and cultural success for Māori students. Many of their students are the first in their family to go to university.
Durie says they were the 18th best-performing school in the country in the latest university entrance results, “quantifiable evidence” Māori are the best ones to look after their own people.
He is proud of the results, but says the performance of Māori boys still lags across the board, something he wants to improve.
“The biggest drive for me about Tīpene isn’t some romantic notion about going back to my old school. It’s about the students.”
He says if you scratch below the surface at many mainstream schools, the results for Māori boys are horrible.
“The horrific part is that people accept it and do nothing about it,” McCausland-Durie says. “They see it as normal.”
She says it got to a point before they started Tu Toa where she had to act on her frustrations at what she was seeing in education.
Durie points to the establishment of kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa and wananga as Māori-led instituions that allow Māori to succeed.
“We invest millions and millions of dollars into Māori education, but mostly we pour it down the throats of institutions that have failed for a century. What we have seen is when Māori are given the opportunity to drive their own initiatives it’s successful.”
Something Durie is especially proud of is sending students to medicine school every year. He believes a way of improving negative health statistics for Māori is increasing the number of Māori working in health – in policy and on the front lines.
The new mission
Reopening Tīpene has been in the works for about six years.
Durie, an old boy of the school and former staff member, says building has been going on for more than a year and the dormitory building is almost finished.
They have kept the three big Spanish-style buildings at the front of the 155-hectare property.
He says he had always wanted to provide opportunities for Māori education and especially “provide for a cohort that is terribly served in the system”.
They aim to reopen in 2025 with 30 year 9 students in the first year and grow each year.
McCausland-Durie says there had been a huge expression of interest to enrol from parents, many of them the children or grandchildren of old boys.
While they want to stick to the history and tradition, they also want to look to the future.
They will listen to the needs of the whānau and children about what they want from the school.
Durie says following the example of Manukura, if they get a team of people who believe in what they are doing and will work hard, it will grow.
“It’s a massive challenge. We’re not delusional about it, it’s a very needy space. No-one else has been stupid enough to put their hand up.
“We are definitely committed to having a go. We don’t know if we’ve got all the answers. What we do know is it won’t be worse than what’s out there at the moment, because it’s horrible.”