Aotearoa’s museums and galleries could really help our crisis-hit education system – but they too face a big funding problem
Opinion: Another month, another teacher’s strike. In what has become depressingly familiar headline fodder, schools around Aotearoa were closed last week as teachers from area and secondary schools went on strike for better pay and conditions. Meanwhile, demand for secondary teachers could outstrip supply in 2023/2024 and truancy levels have reached crisis point.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions – there is no one quick fix. Funding New Zealand’s galleries and museums adequately – and for the long term – is part of the puzzle, but this doesn’t get much airtime.
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It should. Our museums and galleries manage cultural assets worth more than $3.6 billion. Research commissioned by Museums Aotearoa/Te Tari o Ngā Whare Taonga o Te Motu shows that, in 2021, more than 17.5 million visits were made to galleries, museums and heritage properties, generating $272 million. That same year, 906,000 students visited these institutions, delivering an estimated $24.6m of value to the Government’s school curriculum, while inspiring, informing and enriching our rangatahi.
Anecdotal evidence suggests the value our museums deliver is priceless. I recently heard about a curator visiting a marae as part of ongoing fieldwork in the area. While the museum team was there, kids from a nearby primary school popped in. The team took the opportunity to show the pupils their work, and what they could observe and measure in the marae’s local environment.
The kids’ first foray into counting bugs, birds, plants and other natural objects turned into a fortnightly Zoom with the museum’s scientists, where they discussed what they’d been noticing on the local shoreline, dunes and wetlands, and what that said about the health of the environment.
This relationship helped nurture in these rangatahi new ways of looking at the area in which they lived, and, for some, an ongoing curiosity about science.
After a number of these Zooms, the teacher and a community leader were discussing their impact on these kids: “How would you sum up the difference the programme had made?”
“They turn up to school now.”
This is science in action. And yet Aotearoa’s museums and galleries face an unprecedented funding crisis.
They’re mostly funded via a mix of local government, retail and cafe sales, venue hire and entrance fees. But rising costs of living, the pandemic-related decline in international tourism and the corresponding dearth of central government financial support mean many museums and galleries are struggling to make ends meet.
Indeed, much of the coverage of Auckland Council’s proposed budget cuts has focused on the potentially disastrous impacts of these on our cultural institutions. Ministry of Education funding for museums has reduced from $5.2m a year to about $3m.
The funding cuts’ consequences are obvious at Whirinaki Whare Taonga in Upper Hutt. The gallery has been running an education programme partly funded by the ministry for the past three years. It welcomed 4000 students annually into its $9m custom classroom, funded by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Yet last year, at a moment when educators were expected to deliver the revised New Zealand history curriculum in partnership with their communities, funding was cut. The classroom sits empty.
New Zealand’s museums and galleries have run educational programmes in their communities for years, operating independently of the school system while supporting teachers. Educators at primary and intermediate levels cannot be expected to be experts in everything. Museums, with their subject-matter experts and rich collections of taonga, deliver inspiring, hands-on experiences that bring subjects to life. Lifting schools and students’ performance in these subjects is critical to the future of our economy. Research suggests that 80 percent of future jobs will require maths and science, and New Zealand is unprepared to equip the next generation with these skills.
If we are serious about backing teachers to get the basics right, we need to look beyond the school gates to the ways our communities can supercharge the student experience. They’re hiding in plain sight.
The future of these houses of knowledge, history and culture cannot be left to the mercy of macroeconomic factors or the whims of local mayors. We do not need to invest in developing a new system, but we must invest in what already exists to extract its full value for students, the school system, and to develop our knowledge economy.
