INTRODUCTION

The Tūhoe Education Authority was established in 1998 as a result of the desire for Tūhoe schools to unite and co-operate as a cluster of schools. The Authority is a dynamic organisation that exists only to meet the needs of those schools and their respective communities. The TEA partnership with the Ministry of Education was established when the Memorandum of Understanding was signed at Waimakö Marae in Waikaremöana April 1999. The motivation in this partnership for the Ministry of Education, was the recognition that the TEA was able to address educational issues within Tūhoe Schools in a way that the Ministry on its own could not. The Tūhoe Education Authority’s mandate comes from the schools. The project is a positive move towards finding different solutions to the disparities that affect our children in education.