Schools and Education

Thames, and only irregularly (AJHR 1882 GD. He recorded a few years later that some Maori children who lived nearby attended public schools at Te Aroha, Paeroa and Parawai (AJHR 1887 GD.

4.13 The first native school in the region was set up in 1884 and was transferred to the Education Board after ten years because the Pakeha enrolment topped so%. The second school was established in 1897 and the remainder of the group early in the loth century. The following table shows the pattern of development:

Kirikiri   opened 1884   transferred to Education Board 1894

Manaia   1897

Te Kerepehi   1902   transferred to Education Board 1912

Mataora Bay   1908

Wharekawa   1908   (became Opoutere in 1912)

Te Huruhi   1911   transferred to Education Board 1917

This small total does not imply a lack of parental and community interest. During the period the Department received applications for schools from the following communities: Harataunga, Ohui, Puketui, Waitoki and Taungatara, as well as from Great Barrier, Kawa (on Great Barrier) and from Bowentown/Otawhiwhi and Matakana

Island (BAAA IOW 244b, 487b; AJHR 1901 E2, 1904 EI, 1905 ED.

4.14 The rolls of these schools in 1911 (ie. not including Kirikiri but before the transfer of two more to the Auckland Education Board) were:

Manaia   32

Te Kerepehi   z6

Mataora Bay   21

Wharekawa   z8

Te Huruhi   32

Total   139

Of this total, 21 pupils were classified as 'European' CAJHR 1912 E3). The remainder, io8, can be only a minority of the school age population of the region—the total Maori population of the three 'core' counties in 1911 was over z,000.

4.15 Hauraki in 1911 had 4.8% of the schools and 3.4% of the pupils in the native school system. The counties classified as 'core' in the population section of this report contained 4.1% of the total Maori population. Evidently, Hauraki Maori did not to a significant extent suffer from neglect in comparison with other regions, if public school as well as native school attendance is taken into account. But they would have suffered from the inadequacies of the system itself especially, perhaps, from the frustration experienced by communities which failed to secure schools of their own and by others which saw their schools pass out of their control to the Education Board.

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