Our Vision

The Vision: Our dream is that Ngāi Tahu whānau enjoy life-long learning that equips them to create their own destiny.
The goal is that educational opportunities relevant to our people are accessible and enriching.

Ngāi Tahu has always valued education as a critical tool in our on-going tribal development; we need great minds – minds in tune with the iwi – to help chart our journey of tribal development.

In the early colonial period, iwi members seized upon bilingual literacy and in the 1950s the predecessor to Te Rūnanga started educational scholarships.
Now, we are growing educational participation and success at all levels, to assist Ngāi Tahu whānau to unlock their individual potential and to grow the leaders of tomorrow. It begins with our tamariki where we fund literacy and numeracy tuition. For high school students we fund grant scholarships and at a tertiary level, we have a range of scholarships for all fields of study as well as targeted scholarships in key areas where we need graduates.

Several successful partnership initiatives in education, leadership and industry began after the Christchurch earthquakes. These intiatives have supported thousands of our own rangatahi (young people) to gain higher qualifications in encouraging career development that made a difference to the rebuild of the city, such as quantity surveying, building, engineering, construction management, site supervision, and architectural technology.  These many initiatives, and the ongoing support Te Rūnanga provides, supports participants to meet their own personal potential.

‘Tokona te Raki’: the Māori Futures Collective, ensure whānau and their futures are at the heart of everything. They champion equity in education by influencing those in government, education, industry and communications to advocate for a fair and just approach.

Te Rūnanga is committed to The Education and Training Act 2020 to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We support the Te Ahu o Te Reo programme of language development for teachers and provide resources to ensure Ngāi Tahu culturally significant contexts are available for schools to include in their Aotearoa NZ Histories curriculum.  The government is refreshing the national curriculum over the coming years, ensuring it is fit for purpose to support the language, identity, culture, and wellbeing of all students in Aotearoa.  Te Rūnanga has several teams working on iwi-wide resources to celebrate and understand the rich history of Ngāi Tahu.