A brighter future
UNDER THE BRIDGE
Read the full story of Papakura High School through the eyes of three senior students and their principal and watch the 30-minute Under the Bridge documentary at:
John Rohs has begun to obsess about Papakura High School. It is the last thing he thinks of at night, and the first thing when he wakes up. Sometimes, it even permeates his dreams.
The third term has seen a flurry of events. As well as the school ball, there’s been a Tongan cultural evening; a catered lunch for local business owners; the opening of the school’s Pasifika Centre and unprecedented parent attendance at its Matariki celebrations for the Maori New Year.
Principal Rohs is busy working on another new project when the future mayor of Auckland, Phil Goff, drops a bomb. A live radio debate on diversity has somehow turned to South Auckland schools. Goff explains he has first-hand knowledge of their limitations, his children went to a decile 1, Papakura High.
“I don’t think it does its duty by the children that go there,” Goff says. “I think we are not getting the quality we need in some of those schools.”
Rohs is infuriated. When he’s cross he gets very quiet, and there is a long pause after he hears the broadcast.
“I can’t comment on Phil Goff’s children’s experience of being in this school. He is free as a parent to have . . . that opinion,” he says.
“I can’t argue with the fact we’ve had unfavourable ERO reports. My issue is that out of all the schools in Auckland to talk about he chose Papakura High School.”
Despite best efforts, rumours of the school’s closure are still circulating, and Goff’s comments come at a particularly inopportune time — when parents are thinking about enrolment for next year.
“It’s vexing because we are working really hard to turn it around,” Rohs says.
The negativity is also a distraction from his next plan: reforming Papakura High School’s structure.
Rohs has decided to realign the school more closely with kaupapa Maori. The traditional “house” system will be replaced by a whanau-based model. Leadership roles will have Maori names, as will buildings, and greetings will be in te reo. Students will have a larger role in decisionmaking at the school. Rohs will move his office from its dark hole at the back of the school to a new reception area, where he will be more visible and accessible to parents and kids.
“The cultural context is critical for me,” Rohs says. “Too many young Maori leave school with no qualifications. And it can’t be that young Maori are . . . not equal in terms of their brain power as non-Maori, it has to be factors within the education system that contribute to that sense of failure.”
New Zealand’s historically monocultural approach has left Maori alienated, he says. Ensuring whanau can engage at school without having to repress their own culture will help the students feel more positive about learning, meaning better achievement and less disruption.
“If Maori are succeeding in school then everyone is going to be succeeding at school,” he says.
He plans to make the change at the end of 2017, with new leadership roles to be appointed before the end of the year.
Wendy Savieti is at work when she sees the Counties Manukau women’s rugby team playing on national TV. She is waitressing part-time in the evenings now, her first job, a minimum-wage role at a sports bar in Takanini. It is a busy day, but as soon as she sees the game on-screen she knows she has to get out of there before the customers see her cry.
“I had to cool off. I was sad. I just thought . . . that I should have been there,” she says. “That I could have been there and instead I decided to be [at work].”
Wendy only played one more game after her concussion, eventually defying her parents’ wishes to join in the girls’ final. She scored two tries and came off the field elated, to be met by a Counties Manukau scout, who invited her to trial for the team.
“It was exhilarating,” she said. “After the concussion I wasn’t sure if it was going to come about. I thought
My mum was really upset, She doesn’t want me to leave the house but I’m going to do it. I’m going to go, get my own independence and learn what it’s like to be an adult. Jayden Schell
it was too late, but he said to come along.”
When the dates for the trials were announced, however, Wendy realised they clashed with work. It was a dilemma — she was saving the money she earned to help pay for a family trip to Tonga next year, for her grandfather’s unveiling. He died last year. His picture in the family living room is still decorated with a purple lei, out of affection.
Many of Wendy’s relatives on her father’s side still live in Tonga, and the family regularly send them money. For Wendy, this is not an issue, even though sometimes it means a financial struggle.
“We’re not the richest family in the world but my dad has always provided for us and I know things are really bad back in the islands. Compared to them I feel pretty privileged,” she says.
Wendy’s dad, Ian, works shifts at a distributor’s nearby. Her mum, Mareta, who left school aged 13 and had Wendy when she was 16, looks after the children and their home. Neither of the parents asked their daughter to get a job.
“I just feel like it’s the right thing to do. I always try to put family first, before the needs of myself,” she says.
It will be her first trip to Tonga, and she wants the unveiling to be special. “I want to make sure our entire family is part of that and we aren’t missing out.”
Putting rugby aside, while painful, has left Wendy more time to focus on school. She has now appeared at dozens of Papakura events, always dressed immaculately in her black skirt and forest-green blazer, always ready to give a speech or to help out when needed.
Equally, her academic work is well under control. By the time exams roll around she has already got enough credits to pass NCEA Level 3, the only one in her year who is so wellprepared. Wendy wants to win a scholarship to university, with the ultimate goal of getting a well-paying job and no longer feeling like a burden to her parents.
“I always ask my dad what he wants for us and it’s like, he wants us to have good jobs. I think that’s the best thing I could give my dad, for us to be financially stable,” she says. “I just want him to not . . . worry about us. That’s my motivation.”
Exams arrive at Papakura, bringing the most stressful time of year. Rohs refuses to let the seniors go on study leave unless all of their assessments are finished, so the teachers are kept busier than usual marking essays or projects well into November. Ministry of Education achievement monitors in the school add extra pressure. The line to the career counsellor’s door is never-ending, with students frantically applying for scholarships right down to deadline.
By December, the staff are exhausted. Studies have found those who work in low-decile schools suffer more burnout compared with those who work with privileged students. Their work is draining, and requires the teachers to go above and beyond repeatedly, sometimes with little gain.
For year 13 dean Rachel Fagan, it is exasperating watching students leave two or three credits off gaining University Entrance and she does her best to chase them down, sometimes making home visits out of desperation.
Robert Downes is one of those on her watchlist. Despite making it to the final round of applicants for a scholarship to study sports science, he hasn’t finished his required workload and Fagan is concerned he won’t make the grades to join the course. Robert has a girlfriend now, but she’s not the problem. He’s under a weight of expectation and feels overwhelmed.
“It’s pretty hard. Because it’s like you’re multitasking but more than multitasking. There’s heaps of stuff on your shoulders,” he says. “My dad just keeps telling me, don’t do what I did, don’t drop out.”
Jayden Schell is having issues too. From a high in the middle of the year, he is somewhat subdued, and clearly under stress. As well as trying to finish his portfolios for photography, painting and design, there is tension at home, some of it stemming from his decision to move out next year. “My mum was really upset, She doesn’t want me to leave the house but I’m going to do it,” he says. “I’m going to go, get my own independence and learn what it’s like to be an adult.”
Meanwhile, Rohs has been engaged in a much bigger battle, over the future of the school. Ministry of Education officials wanted to use mid-year roll projections to cut staffing numbers for 2017, under which the school would lose seven of its 40 teachers. The impact would have been devastating, despite Government assurances Papakura wouldn’t close.
“They can say that, but if you’re going to lose teachers it doesn’t take long before a school is in shutdown mode,” Rohs says. “It was going to shut down a whole lot of programmes in the school at a time we want to increase the programmes in our school.”
Rohs fought back, hard. He argued there were indications the roll would grow next year, and pleaded with the ministry to give the school a break from the constant redundancies that had seen staff further demoralised each year. Fortunately, the ministry listened, and agreed to keep the staff reduction at bay.
The news comes just before prizegiving, giving Rohs a boost before his final speech of the year.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how the next few years at school unfold,” he says. “The potential in Papakura is enormous. It’s the kind of place you can form a love for.”
Prizegiving is short and noisy, punctuated by impromptu haka. The Pasifika parents bring armfuls of candy leis, draping them around the necks of their children in rare gestures of public pride.
Jayden is awarded top of drama, a trophy he gleefully shows to his mum before she gives him a tearful hug. He will be going to university after working for a year to save money. Wendy gets several prizes, including a $1000 gift and a trophy for coming top of all the Pasifika students. Her mum films the whole ceremony, her dad watching from the back with two little nieces who run up and down the aisle.
Robert is nervous, and trying to hide it, but his knee keeps jiggling and he is sweating. All he is thinking of is his dad, and how he will react if he gets the MIT scholarship. He gets several awards for dedication to the school before the prize is finally announced as his.
He ambles on stage, smiling, and gives Rohs a hongi. He has done it. Both he and Wendy will be the first in their families to go to university.
“Everyone kept looking at us, on stage. I was trying to stay humble,” Robert says. “I sort of broke the chain in my family. But they’re the reason I am where I am now. It’s a huge achievement.”
Wendy feels a mixture of sadness and disbelief. “It feels surreal. I didn’t think I was going to make it,” she says.
“In my family we weren’t expected to go as far in school, and that goes to say for a lot of families in Papakura as well. You’re expected to mature faster so all you’re taught is being a mum or going to get a job. It isn’t an expectation of us to go all the way.”
She has decided to study a Bachelor of Arts at AUT, but has to wait to hear about whether it will be scholarship-funded or whether she will be required to get a student loan.
A few days later, Rohs is in his new office surveying the placement of his furniture. He’s hung his favourite photos on the wall — including a canvas of the Papakura school leaders. A bunch of boxes are in one corner, ready for the care packages he plans to put together for needy families before Christmas. “On my income it’s the least I can do,” he says.
Rohs looks tired, but is energised by an encounter with a boy that morning, where the teenager proudly introduced the principal to his father for the first time. It’s still the students that Rohs enjoys the most about the job, the interactions that keep him focused. Though it’s the end of the year he’s fizzing with ideas for 2017, dreaming of creating a Maori immersion unit, and looking forward to working in his light new space. He’s in a reflective mood.
“If I think about what change might have occurred, I focus on the fact that I felt that the most important thing I needed to do this year was to give people a sense of hope,” he says. “And I feel like I have done that.
“Of course there’s been moments when I’ve really had to ask myself was I crazy coming up here. I can truly and honestly say I’ve never had a moment of regret. Not one.”
He looks out along the row of oaks where, in five minutes, a bell will ring and hundreds of students will spill from their classrooms and stream out the gates. The afternoon sun shines through the leaves and catches the stained glass windows of the marae. As far as he can see, the future for Papakura High School is bright.