‘It’s always M¯aori kids who get pulled up’

Research indicates systemic and person racial bias hurting learners

It’s long been known that Ma¯ori students are more likely to get kicked out of school. The phenomenon has been blamed on factors outside the classroom, from higher rates of poverty to parents’ education levels.

But new research has found after stripping away those factors, Ma¯ori kids are still nearly 50 per cent more likely to be stood down, suspended or excluded from school than Pa¯keha¯.

That finding underlines what experts have said for decades — that systemic and personal racial bias is hurting Ma¯ori learners, leaving them with worse educational outcomes that can have ripple effects for life.

The as-yet-unpublished research looked at more than 43,000 students who started school in 2008 and finished compulsory education in 2018.

Researchers looked at factors known to affect educational outcomes, such as parents’ income, history of abuse, whether they received learning support, and home ownership, using anonymised data from Stats NZ.

They found similar background factors were good predictors of exclusion rates for both Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ students. But when these variables were removed, Ma¯ori students were still nearly 50 per cent more likely to get stood down, suspended or excluded over the course of their schooling than Pa¯keha¯.

Pacific students were also more likely to be excluded, but once background factors like poverty were removed they were excluded at similar rates to Pa¯keha¯ — though this was complicated by whether they received English for speakers of other languages (Esol) support.

The paper is based on a masters thesis by Cassia-rose Hingston at the University of Canterbury. Her supervisor, senior lecturer Dr Steve Agnew, said family background and socioeconomic factors were often blamed for Ma¯ori and Pacific students’ higher exclusion rates, but the research showed that wasn’t the whole story.

He said one possibility was known as the Pygmalion effect — the idea that teachers’ expectations of achievement can become a selffulfilling prophecy. That unconscious bias may similarly affect exclusion rates.

Dr Hana O’regan, tumu whakarae (chief executive) of Core Education, said there was plenty of evidence bias and negative stereotypes contributed to Ma¯ori kids’ poorer educational outcomes. A bigger picture included practices like unfairly streaming Ma¯ori kids into the lowest classes.

“We’ve got negative expectation, we’ve got policy that actually feeds and fosters it, world views that have gone unchecked . . . to the point that we just believe it,” she said.

The end result was kids gave up, and began behaving badly because their teacher expected it, she said.

“My son says to me, ‘Mum, everyone can be talking in the class — it’ll be the Ma¯ori ones who get pulled up. We’re doing no different from anyone else — we’re the ones who get detention’.”

There were parallels in the justice system, where Ma¯ori were far more likely to be charged or receive a custodial sentence than Pa¯keha¯ who committed the same offence.

“In an education context . . . you’re more likely to be expelled for the same offence if you’re Ma¯ori, or even go through the [disciplinary] process,” she said.