supporting tiriti-based curriculum delivery in mainstream early ...

and Case Study Two (Decile 10) were roughly at opposite ends of the decile
continuum. The schools surrounding Case Study Three were Deciles 7and 8.
However, in terms of, for example, resources, where socio-economic
disparity can show up, material differences for the centres in this study did not
appear to be marked. All centres in Aotearoa New Zealand receive government
funding so what could make a difference is the ability of parents to provide
additional money through fees, donations and fundraising. Informal conversation
with teachers led me to conclude that few differences in funding were apparent and
thus, socio-economic status, on the surface at least, did not appear to be important
for these three case studies. Put another way, although socio-economic status was
not formally investigated (by accessing financial statements etc.) there seemed to
be a remarkable similarity of resourcing between each of the centres – at least to
the casual or even frequent observer.
5.5.4 Involving Managers 3
The final factor I had wanted to investigate (but was unable to) was the
influence of management structures in multi-owned or chains of centres. Although
I was unable to co-research with teachers from a large chain (as noted in chapter 4),
I did meet with the owners of Case Study One centre. Case Study One, it will be
recalled, was one of four centres and I wanted to investigate whether or not Tiriti-
based curriculum was centrally managed and if so how.
The owners of Case Study One told me that each supervisor had
responsibility for running their centre with a budget from which they could choose
to order Tiriti-based resources such as puzzles and books. Management of areas
such as human resources and book-keeping were similar in all four centres, but
were centrally controlled. After observing the centre practices and talking with D
the supervisor it was apparent to me, therefore, that management practices in this
group of centres did not adversely affect the implementation of Tiriti-based
curriculum.
For these three case studies, a series of selection criteria were applied.
However, the only factor which appeared to impact on Tiriti-based curriculum was
3 The evidence for this section, unless referenced otherwise, comes from notes 24/3/04 of discussion held
with the two owners.
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