Hawkes Bay is set to get a new kura hourua aimed at helping young male’s succeed and gain employment.
It's backed by Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Inc and sponsored by Te Ara Tika drilling. The charter school is set to open its doors in February 2017.
Te Ara Tika Drilling is a family business built from the ground up and has sign-off to establish it's kura hourua.
Ronnie Rochel of Te Ara Tika Drilling says, “We started the kura because we've been involved in a cadetship for a number of years and we actually saw the need to provide young Māori boys with life skills to be employment ready.”
School director, Casey Tapara says, “Our boys will be able to receive a curriculum that is the New Zealand curriculum NCEA levels one to two and we'll be offering vocational civil construction and infrastructure and our ITO provider will be Connexis.”
Its doors are open to all, not just Māori, and will be built in Hawkes Bay with a location yet to be confirmed.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education, David Seymour says, “The way that the kura hourua policy works is that the sponsors have to make those decisions. They don't have to tell the government exactly where it will be until 90 days before opening under the contract.”
The kura hourua model or charter school is a partnership school between the government, private sponsors and the community. Legislation which came into law in 2013.
Seymour says, “There will always be knockers and critics of these policies, but I visit kura hourua and I look into the eyes of the kids and I see what a difference it makes for them and I say that this is the future.”
For the last 18 years, Te Ara Tika Drilling has been running a cadetship programme that has helped teenage Māori boys turn their lives around.
