from above, through the inspectorate; yet the schools became a focus of community loyalty and identity. These paradoxes will become more apparent in the discussion which follows.
4.5 The major focus here is upon a small group of six Hauraki schools jointly provided by Maori communities and the Department of Education for Maori children, but often also attended by nearby Pakeha children. Over New Zealand generally native schools were mostly to be found in districts without a large settler population and under-supplied with public schools. Such conditions did not fully obtain in the compact Hauraki region, where the two populations lived in close proximity compared, for example, with Northland and the East Coast. Most of the native schools in Hauraki were at first fairly distant from centres of Pakeha population. But as settlement spread and Pakeha enrolment increased they were, in three cases out of six, transferred to the Education Board.
4.6 As well, many Maori children attended public schools. Published reports do not give information relating to individual schools or to particular regions; accordingly there is little information on this aspect of Maori education in Hauraki. In New Zealand as a whole in 1914 there were 4,132 Maori children attending 107 native schools; in the same year 4,791 attended 565 public schools (AJHR 1914 El). The proportion of Maori children attending public schools had increased considerably over the early zoth century. If the situation in Hauraki reflected that of New Zealand as a whole, rather more than half of Maori children would have attended public schools. The proportion probably increased as Pakeha settlement increased in the early zoth century. A return published in 1900 shows that the counties of Coromandel, Thames and Ohinemuri (including interior boroughs) had 33 public schools (AJHR 1900 ED. There can be no doubt that a significant number of Maori children attended them and that their number increased with Pakeha settlement.
4.7 Some Maori parents believed that their children suffered from discrimination and hostility at public schools, and this belief fostered their loyalty to the native schools. But whether this was widely the case or not, it is reasonably certain that in public schools the assimilationist ethos would have been at least as strong and that the presence of a Pakeha majority would have placed Maori children at some disadvantage. Even if the region was not under-supplied with educational facilities for Maori children, their quality and their capacity to satisfy Maori community interests and aspirations remains open to question.
The native schools
4.8 Schools for Maori children, intended to integrate them into the new colonial world and to provide them with useful skills, begin with the Christian missions. In the 184os the colonial government began to support them financially; later some provincial governments ran schools which Maori children attended until the central government took over. From the beginnings of colonial government it was accepted that Maori
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