Tuai School - Urewera National Park

We often think that large, urban schools in affluent communities are the most likely to produce innovative and creative work. Tuai has proved otherwise. By forming good partnerships with a wide variety of organisations and with strong support from their local community, Tuai School is developing a teaching program that uses the local environment as the main context for teaching and learning over most curriculum areas.

The Setting
Tuai is a small settlement tucked in bush on the edge of the Urewera National Park. Built to support hydro power development in the region in 1929, the settlement now boasts a young (32% are under 15 years of age) and largely Maori (72% claim Maori descent) population of 270. This population, many of whom work in the Conservation Estate, supports rugby, league and golf teams, a shop and club, community hall, fire station, church, two marae and two schools.

Tuai school is set right in the heart of the settlement, in the midst of the dams, settlement ponds, slipways, and the Lake Waiwhakamarino that together make up the hydro power complex.

The Vision - a local environment science and technology hub
Principal, Allan Turner and his wife Shirley alongside a supportive community, recognized that these two powerful influences - the nearby extensive indigenous forest, and the variety and abundance of streams, wetlands and watercourses - could be utilised to turn the schools curriculum focus towards a local environment-based science and technology program.

Work in this area had already begun, the school being justifiably proud of their community-run native plant nursery, their work with the Department of Conservation's kiwi recovery program, and alongside DoC and NIWA, ongoing surveys of the aquatic ecology in the district.

The vision of Alan is to build on this work, and to carry it further through:

	Mapping the variety of waterways and the water quality in the region. An important aspect of this being to develop skills in the students and the community that will enable them to monitor changes in their rivers and lake, look for sources of impacts, and evaluate the data in a systematic and analytical way.
	Develop an ongoing understanding of the ecology of the whenua (land), nga awa (rivers), and te roto (lake).
	Set up a functioning science laboratory that could lead students into the world of modern science and assist with the hands-on monitoring.
	Have a parallel program gathering the historical and cultural material and the indigenous Maori science - the whakapapa and tikanga of the area- so important for developing sustainable resource management practice and the richness of community.
	Develop restoration programs based on the data collected.
	Create a Catchment Plan of the area, incorporating all the information gathered.
	Look at the possibility of utilising aspects of the indigenous resource base (eg for aquaculture).

Partnerships
In order to achieve their goals, the school has focused on developing partnerships with a variety of key providers. These include

Department of Conservation (DoC)
Massey University
Hawkes Bay Regional Council
Wairoa District Council
National Waterways Project
Tairawhiti REAP

Some Outcomes Already Achieved
Some achievements that have already occurred are

	Wetland Week, a week devoted to learning about water quality and indigenous ecology, and traditional and modern indigenous aquatic resource management practices.
	Identifying a highly alkaline stream and the possible cause.
	Getting the digital microscope operating.
	Developing protocols for laying possum poison in nearby catchments.
	Receiving a grant from the BOC 'where there's water….' fund, in partnership with 3 other local schools and DoC.