Phone ban helps low-decile Ma¯ori school nail high NCEA ranking

A low-decile Ma¯ori boarding school that bans cellphones has hit the top 10 for University Entrance in this year’s high-school league tables.

Decile-2 St Joseph’s Ma¯ori Girls’ College in Napier was sixth on the list, with 23 of 24 students in its Year 13 class last year gaining University Entrance (UE) and Level 3 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).

The Catholic school’s head of English, Radne Ardern, a cousin of the Prime Minister, said it succeeded because of a strict regimen including no mobile phones, even though twothirds of the 213 students were boarders.

“Literally, they are taken off them and not given back,” she said. “The day-girls are allowed to bring them to school but they have to leave them at the office and collect them again at the end of the day.”

The college joins three other private Hawke’s Bay schools in the top six in the latest data provided by the NZ Qualifications Authority.

The UE list was topped by two high-decile private girls’ schools in Havelock North, Woodford House and Iona College. All except one of the final-year students at both schools gained UE — 53 out of 54 at Woodford and 41 out of 42 at Iona.

Another private Hawke’s Bay school, Lindisfarne College for boys in Hastings, was also in the top six, along with Rangi Ruru, a Presbyterian girls’ school in Christchurch, and Baradene College, a Catholic girls’ school in Auckland.

St Joseph’s results are surprising because the national data shows huge gaps between high and low-decile schools. On average 65 per cent of final-year students in schools in the richest three deciles gained UE, compared with only 28 per cent in the poorest three deciles.

The wealth divide was reflected in the ethnic data: 61 per cent of Asians

Literally, they (cellphones) are taken off them and not given back. Radne Ardern, head of English

and 55 per cent of Europeans in Year 13 achieved UE, but only 29 per cent of both Ma¯ori and Pasifika students.

A student in last year’s Year 13 group who was one of the 23 to gain UE at St Joseph’s, Grace HemaraTylden, said the school encouraged all girls to succeed. “The school culture is that we have to do well to make a better future for ourselves.”

She comes from Waima, in the Hokianga area, and attended Northland College up to Year 11 before her grandparents paid for her to go to St Joseph’s in her final two years of school, and said the move “made all the difference”.

She is now at Otago University.

“The school teaches us to be comfortable with who we are and to be comfortable with being Ma¯ori, and that we can be anything we want to be. Also, because it was a boarding school, we were away from home, and it was also a way of repaying our parents for having sent us to the school — we repay them by doing well.”

Ardern said classes were small and teachers returned to the school in the evenings during the third term each year to give the girls extra tuition.

“They start doing study at Year 7, they do one session in the evening. By the time they reach Year 9 they have two sessions a night.”

Long-serving principal Dame Georgina Kingi ran “a tight ship” and the girls responded to it, Ardern said. Kingi’s discipline was “admired by the wha¯nau”.

Kapa haka and sports were compulsory, but so were academic subjects. “They are all required to do a course that would get them UE.”

Although the fees were $13,000 a year, Ardern said the school was not “elitist” and drew Ma¯ori girls from all over New Zealand and Australia.