The programme opening up the world for rangatahi Māori
Saturday, 6 June 2026
A kōrero with the year 11 ākonga (students) sitting around a table at Wellington’s Tawa College reveals future psychologists, teachers and scholars.
Others are still figuring out what their pathway looks like. Like Jessica: she loves Māori lessons, and she’s doing well in them, but isn’t sure what the future holds.
“The class might help me figure out what I want to do at uni,” she says.
The students are here for a Pūhoro STEMM session: an initiative focused on increasing the numbers of rangatahi Māori into science, tech, engineering and maths pathways. The added “m” is mātauranga Māori: knowledge, wisdom and skill.
“E tu tatou,” says kaiako (teacher) Angus Te Puni, encouraging the students to stand for an icebreaker (What would you take in your waka to Hawaiki? Answers: a jacket, a bed, some water, eyelash clusters).
Read more:
For some students, fees free opened the door to further study but it wasn't enough
The NCEA is going on the scrapheap. What’s replacing it, and what will it mean for learners?
Te Puni is warm and friendly, with a wide smile. He tells the students what’s on the cards for the class: a tutorial, which he’s leading with help from undergraduate students Kahu Potaka and Tom Lucock.
“We’re going to look what is on your academic calendar, and if you are requiring any assistance in a particular subject, or preparing for an internal, external: that’s what the three of us are here for.”
Pūhoro STEMM began in 2016 as a response to the low rangatahi engagement of in stem pathways ‒ their impact report says Māori make up less than 2% of the scientific workforce.
Funded by the Government, universities and corporate partners, the programme sends kaiako out into schools, aiming to bolster engagement in stem subjects, and forge pathways to further education, all through a lens of mātauranga Māori.
Ten years later, it delivers programmes to more than 90 schools in 14 regions, the most recent of which is Te Whanganui-a-Tara, launched in partnership with Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, which offers funding support and a premises on its campus.
Pūhoro’s own reporting says the programme has been successful, with students receiving NCEA standards above the national Māori average, and participants reportedly five times more likely to transition into tertiary study.
Te Puni understands the students, especially those going through challenges, because he’s been there himself.
He grew up on the margins, with a father who is a former gang member. He came to learning late: it wasn’t that he didn’t like school, he just didn’t grow up in an environment where it was important, he says.
But returned to study in his 20s and 30s, studied Māori public health, and addiction. He loved studying and now he hopes to guide others onto that same path.
He recently had a quiet kōrero with a kaiako worried about attendance of some of the boys.
“It calls back that reason why for me, because I was much the same,” Te Puni says.
“It’s not that we’re incapable between using the space between our taringa (ears) … it’s trying to bring them alongside while still fanning the flames of those that are really running with the kaupapa.
“It’s a combined effort, we’re in this waka together. Everyone is important, everyone needs to have a paddle.”
Potaka, who is studying political science and international relations at Victoria, says the programme and its students gives her hope.
“It’s just so cool, it makes my heart all fuzzy.”
She went through the Pūhoro programme herself, at her high school in Feilding. It opened up a world of options, she says.
“It just showed me what’s out there, they had everything from Fonterra and Genesis [visits] to forensics and criminology.”
She is eager to pass this knowledge to younger students.
“They just have no idea what kind of opportunities there are for them.”
Two girls are working on a workbook, looking at the way sediment has shifted in Porirua Harbour. They examine this using reports of the area’s geology, and kaumātua accounts of the how the land has changed over time.
One is Grace, whose favourite class is Māori, which she first took two years ago in year 9.
“I ended up really liking it.” One day, she hopes to study a te ao Māori course at the University of Waikato.
Lucock, who is tackling two Bachelors degrees in law and science, says he’s passionate about passing on his love of science and maths and is eager to play a part in revitalising te ao Māori and its place in stem.
Sitting beside a student, he works with her on a thorny scientific concept, rewording a question to offer a new way of approaching the problem.
“Is that making more sense now?” he asks her.
“Yes, you explained it a bit better than my teacher,” she tells him.
Originally from Christchurch, Lucock didn’t grow up in a Māori world.
“For so many … learning about whakapapa, history, what is the nature of all these different things: whether it’s science, culture, an understanding of te ao Māori. I think it really helps.”