About Māori qualifications
| Tirohia te reo Māori |
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New Zealand is the first country in the world to establish an entire education field that formally recognises indigenous knowledge.
- What is field Māori?
- Who develops and maintains Māori qualifications?
- For providers
- For learners
- Publications
What is field Māori?
There are more than a dozen Māori qualifications and 600 unit standards that are registered on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and 'housed' in field Māori.
Field Māori is one of the 17 fields registered on the Framework. It caters specifically for Māori pedagogy, knowledge and skills.
This field cover a diverse range of areas that reflects the growing demand by industry, Māori communities and educators for formal recognition of Māori skills and knowledge.
Who develops and maintains Māori qualifications?
Māori qualifications are subject to the same rigorous registration process as other NQF qualifications and they must meet the needs of Māori communities.
Recognised Māori experts in partnership with the Māori Qualifications Services unit at NZQA develop, review and maintain these unit standards.
These expert groups known as 'Whakaruruhau' set the national Māori standards and ensure providers are equipped to deliver these standards.
The Māori Qualifications Service helps facilitate the development of these unit standards, provide assessment resources for tutors and promote the uptake of Māori qualifications.
For providers
The existence of field Māori has major implications for the range and types of programmes that can be offered by secondary and tertiary training providers.
Providers can tailor specific programmes to work towards a field Māori qualification, use them to assess against existing Māori programmes or incorporate them in to mainstream courses.
For learners
One of the greatest benefits of achieving credits in field Māori is that they offer a pathway to more than 700 other national qualifications registered on the Framework.
If you already have existing skills and knowledge in Māori areas, you may be able to get credits for these straight away. For more information see assessment of prior learning.
Only some secondary and tertiary providers are accredited to assess against national Māori standards. To view a list of accredited providers for a particular Māori subject, go to Explore Māori qualifications, choose a subfield, a domain and then view the list of regional and national providers for that particular subject.