Frontline - Kura Kaupapa

This Frontline report looks at kura kaupapa, which began in Aotearoa in 1981. The Māori language immersion schools were a response to a mainstream education system that was failing many Māori. An act of language preservation and cultural empowerment, the movement began with kōhanga reo (Māori language preschools), followed by full immersion primary schools, and later high schools. Pita Sharples, who founded the first kura kaupapa — at Auckland's Hoana Waititi Marae — talks to reporter Ross Stevens. Sharples says the schools are a positive intervention in an education system that "has failed our children". 

Kura kaupapa Māori began like kōhanga reo, as a cry from the heart from the Māori people to save their own language. And it was not happening so we had to do it ourselves.

– Hoani Waititi Marae Chairman Sir Pita Sharples

Key Cast & Crew

Ross Stevens

Reporter

Susan Wood

Presenter

Reikura Morgan

Subject

Pita Sharples

Subject