The education of Māori girls
THE PRESS 160 YEARS is a series marking the launch of The Press newspaper in Christchurch on May 25, 1861. Between now and the anniversary, The Press will revisit stories from every year of publication.
The opening of the Te Waipounamu Māori Girls College in 1909 was a significant milestone.
We in this island, particularly in Canterbury, are rather apt to forget that all the Maoris in New Zealand are not in the North Island,” The Press said in an editorial on March 5, 1909.
“The number resident in this part of the Dominion is, as a matter of fact, only a small proportion of the native race, only about 2000 living south of Cook Strait, but numerically feeble as they are, they still demand of us those educational advantages which have been extended to the Maoris in the north, and which cannot fail to benefit not only the individual recipients, but the race.”
The school was opened at Ohoka by the Anglican Māori Diocese, under the direction of Reverend Charles Fraer and his wife, Annie.
Link to article: 1909: The education of Māori girls | Stuff.co.nz
