I recently wrote about an event I attended in Wellington hosted by the team at Pātaka Toa, the education arm of Ngati Toa. One of the key speakers at that event was Bianca Elkington, GM Education and Employment at Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira Incorporated. Her introduction provided an inspirational vision to get the day started, and I’ve finally found a few moments to review the notes I took and summarise what I heard Bianca speak to the audience about as the day began.
Bianca’s talk challenged the notion that educational transformation is something distant we work toward. Instead, she presented an active model where indigenous communities claim agency now, build systems aligned with their values today, and demonstrate that culturally-grounded education delivers both cultural continuity and practical success. The conference theme “preparing tomorrow for our mokopuna today” becomes literal – by acting today with full iwi leadership, Ngati Toa are actively constructing the tomorrow they want mokopuna to inherit, rather than hoping external systems will eventually serve them better.
Core Imperative
Bianca’s challenge is that the transformation isn’t coming; it’s here. The question isn’t whether iwi-led education can work; it’s whether we have the courage to support it at scale.
The challenge here is why wait for change when we can build it now? The central thrust of her talk was that iwi-led education isn’t a future aspiration – it’s already happening and delivering results. The urgency comes from a responsibility to mokopuna (future generations) that demands action today, not in another generation’s time. This aligns so strongly with what I believe, and with the motivation I had for establishing FutureMakers as a vehicle for supporting schools, agencies and educators in pursuing this vision.
Key points in Bianca’s presentation
Here are some of my key takeaways that I noted from Bianca’s talk…
Sovereignty and Self-Determination When Bianca spoke about education “on our terms, in our voice, for our people,” I was struck by how radical this simple statement actually is. How often do we ask communities to fit into educational systems rather than asking systems to honour communities? The challenge here isn’t just for iwi – it’s for all of us: Are we willing to cede the power to define what “good education” looks like?
Practical Results, Not Just Philosophy The numbers she presented were inspiring! Students who hadn’t engaged with school for one or two years now achieving over 90% attendance in less than a term – not through coercion, but through genuine engagement. This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening. (See my post on this issue here). Which makes me wonder; “what does it say about our mainstream systems when students thrive so dramatically once they’re in spaces designed for them rather than at them?”
Choice as a Fundamental Right Bianca and her community have spent a decade building toward one thing – genuine choice for their rangatahi. Not a choice between different versions of the same system, but real alternatives that honour identity while opening doors. It challenges me to ask; “in our own educational contexts, are we offering choice, or just the illusion of it?”
Evolution Over Perfection I appreciated Bianca’s honesty that Kura Taiao isn’t perfect. But it is passionate, community-guided, and evolving. There’s something liberating in that acknowledgment. This reminds me of conversations I had in the past with Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi about the establishment of the Kohanga Reo movement. Too often we wait for the perfect model before we act. But what if transformation requires us to begin imperfectly, learn publicly, and trust our communities to guide the evolution? What would we start building today if we released ourselves from the tyranny of perfection and embraced a culture of experimentation in our approach?
Integration of Future Pathways The vision Bianca described weaves together technology, health, environmental leadership, and creative enterprise – all through iwi partnerships. It’s not a narrow vocational track or a purely academic path. It’s holistic, expansive, and grounded. It embraces the notion of the complete ecosystem of which our education system is a part. It makes me question whether are our current pathways are genuinely preparing young people for the complexity of the futures they’ll actually inhabit?
What Makes This Compelling
There’s a paradox in Bianca’s message that I keep returning to: “Why wait?” alongside the acknowledgment of years of careful, deliberate building. This isn’t impatience – it’s clarity. The work has been underway, the foundation has been laid, and now is the moment to act with conviction. As someone outside this community but committed to working as an ally of indigenous self-determination, I hear this as both an invitation and a warning. The invitation is to recognise and support what’s already working. The warning is that our hesitation, our need for more evidence, our caution – these aren’t neutral. They’re obstacles to mokopuna who need these pathways now, not in another generation. This is what I grapple with regularly as I think about my own grandchildren and the future they will ultimately inherit.
When Bianca spoke about an iwi-led system that “separates us, but also has the opportunity to bring us together,” I understood this as something profound about genuine partnership. Real connection doesn’t come from assimilation or from one group absorbing another into their way of doing things. It comes from distinct, strong communities engaging on equal terms. As a non-Māori person in this space, my role isn’t to shape or direct this work, or even to assume I can be a part of it. My role is to be an ally, to support iwi leadership, to learn what genuine educational sovereignty looks like, and to challenge the systems I am part of to make space for it.
Perhaps the most powerful thing I heard was how Kura Taiao holds together what our mainstream systems too often see as opposed: being deeply anchored in Ngāti Toa identity while preparing students for life beyond school. This is about being culturally grounded and future-facing. It’s not either/or, but both/and. This exposes something I think many of us need to grapple with: our assumption that “preparing for the future” means moving away from cultural grounding, that somehow tradition and innovation exist in tension. Bianca’s work proves otherwise. The students thriving at Kura Taiao aren’t succeeding despite the cultural anchoring – they’re succeeding because of it.
The final tension that stays with me is how Bianca weaves hard evidence with transformative vision. The attendance data, the NCEA results, the engagement metrics – these aren’t just numbers. They’re young lives genuinely changed. But she doesn’t stop at the measurable outcomes. She points toward something larger: a future where iwi-led education isn’t an alternative or an exception, but a fully realised system delivering the best outcomes for Māori students.
And here’s what strikes me about the courage required right now. Bianca and her community are building this vision at a time when the policy winds are blowing hard in another direction. The current government emphasis on knowledge and skills – important as these are – risks flattening education into something narrowly transactional. It measures what’s easy to count while missing what actually matters: identity, belonging, purpose, the ability to navigate multiple worlds with confidence and cultural integrity.
To persist with this broader, more ambitious vision in the face of that policy environment takes extraordinary commitment. It would be easier to retreat, to focus on compliance, to accept the narrow metrics being imposed. Instead, Bianca and her community are holding firm to an aspirational view of what education can and should be – one that prepares young people not just with skills for employment, but with the cultural grounding, the leadership capacity, and the sense of belonging that will sustain them and their communities for generations.
That’s not just educational innovation. That’s resistance. That’s vision. That’s love.
Final Challenge
And here’s what I’m sitting with as I finish writing this: What if the lesson here isn’t just for iwi education? What if mainstream schools across Aotearoa have something profound to learn from Bianca’s approach?
Too many of us in mainstream education have fallen into a pattern of compliance and complaint – implementing the mandated changes while privately lamenting what’s being lost. We’ve become expert at working within constraints rather than challenging them. We’ve accepted a defensive posture: protecting what we can, mourning what we must give up, waiting for the next policy shift.
But the Kura Taiao experience offers a different model entirely. Here’s a community that hasn’t waited for permission or perfect conditions. They’ve claimed agency. They’ve built from their values outward rather than retrofitting values into someone else’s framework. They’ve held firm to a holistic vision of young people even when the policy environment pushes fragmentation.
What would it look like if school leaders across the country took that same approach? Not iwi-led education – that’s not ours to claim – but the principles underneath it: starting with our communities’ deepest aspirations for young people, building systems that honour the whole child, refusing to collapse education into what’s easily measured, having the courage to innovate even when the policy environment discourages it.
Bianca said the future of iwi education isn’t coming – it’s here. They’re not waiting for permission. They’re building the future their mokopuna deserve.
So here’s my challenge to those of us in mainstream education: What are we waiting for? What would we build if we claimed the same agency, the same courage, the same commitment to our communities’ aspirations? What would our schools look like if we moved from compliance and complaint to genuine innovation – if we let policy be the floor, not the ceiling?
The question isn’t whether this is possible. Bianca has shown us it is. The question is whether we have the courage to do it. To support iwi-led transformation, yes – absolutely. But also to let it inspire and challenge our own practice. To stop hiding behind policy constraints and start building the education our young people actually need.
The tomorrow we’re preparing must be built by those who will inherit it. My responsibility – our responsibility – is to make sure they have what they need to build it well. For Māori students, that means resourcing and supporting iwi-led education at scale. For all students, it means bringing that same aspirational thinking, that same courage, that same refusal to settle for narrow versions of what education can be.
Bianca and her community aren’t waiting for permission. The question is: will we join them in that courage?
