Northtec Comes Out On Top For Māori Nursing Achievements

Northtec Comes Out On Top For Māori Nursing Achievements

NorthTec has scored top spot in a leading national study which has shown that the tertiary institution is “responding well” to the needs of its Māori Nursing students.

When it comes to engaging with and responding to the needs of Māori students, NorthTec led the way, finishing in top spot out of 16 tertiary providers in the benchmark study.

NorthTec had the highest percentage of Māori on its Bachelor of Nursing programme in 2010, with 30 percent. On top of this, 89 percent of courses it offered were being successfully completed by Māori students, 85 percent of Māori students were completing their courses and then re-enrolling the following year and 75 per cent of its Māori students had completed the Bachelor of Nursing programme.

Together, these results made NorthTec the number one provider for Māori Nursing students in the country.

“I am proud of the achievements of our Nursing tutors, along with our Māori students, who have worked very hard to bring us these top results”, NorthTec Chief Executive, Paul Binney said. ‘Gaining this top spot is proof that we are committed to responding to the educational needs of Māori in the region.”

NorthTec Nursing and Massage Programme Leader, Jane Anderson, said that she felt “extremely proud” that the work she and her team have been doing at NorthTec has been recognised via this study.

“As a team, Māori achievement has been our focus for some time now. We have been working extremely hard to increase the success rates of Māori over the past few years,” she said.

AUT Associate Professor, Denise Wilson, spokesperson for Ngā Manukura o Āpōpō, the workforce group that conducted the benchmarking exercise, said that for many years now there has been a drive around increasing the Māori health work force and that the intention of Scorecard 2011 was to present data that examines this responsiveness by the tertiary education providers.

This benchmarking study by Ngā Manukura o Āpōpō was the first such study to provide a picture in a macro sense of how the needs of Māori Nursing students were being responded to using TEC data from the 2010 academic year.

The benchmarking took the form of a scorecard for each of the 16 tertiary nursing and midwifery providers that included three universities.

NorthTec Nursing and Massage Programme Leader, Jane Anderson puts NorthTec’s success largely down to the relationships her staff has with Māori students, particularly understanding cultural nuances such as accommodating students when they have whānau commitments and ensuring that students have the right academic grounding in order to cope with the rigours of tertiary level education.

“We are doing well and if you look at the initiatives that have contributed to this success we believe that we have built up a system whereby students are fully prepared by encouraging them to undertake solid foundation programmes.”

Jane believed that a key reason for NorthTec’s success is that “a lot of our Māori students have come through our Foundation Studies and Enrolled Nursing programmes. “We simply want to make sure that they are better prepared before embarking on the degree programme so that they have the required skills to successfully achieve degree level education,” she said.

While Jane recognises that what NorthTec is attempting to do for Māori Nursing students is providing good results, the institution will continue to look at their own initiatives and others to see what further improvements can be introduced.

The national benchmarking study compared all providers of nursing training in the country indicating how well Māori nursing and midwifery students needs were being met and responded to in each institution.

The objective of the exercise was to encourage the sharing of successful initiatives between tertiary nursing providers and develop greater cooperation between them.

Dr Wilson complimented NorthTec on the results it had achieved. With Māori in Northland making up more of the percentage of the population and the rohe it serves, Ngā Manukura o Āpōpō said these achievements in terms of what it was delivering for Māori deserves to be celebrated and built on by the other providers of nursing degree programmes throughout New Zealand.

The first edition of the Performance of New Zealand Schools of Nursing; Responsiveness to Māori Students Scorecard 2011 released last month.

ENDS

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