Kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa and wharekura explained

Kōhanga reo means “language nest”: a kōhanga reo is an early childhood centre where children from birth to school age are surrounded by te reo Māori, a kura kaupapa Māori is a state school taught in te reo Māori under a founding charter called Te Aho Matua, and a wharekura is the Māori-medium secondary school that follows on. Together they are a chain built by Māori parents from 1982 onwards, after the share of Māori schoolchildren who could speak the language had fallen below one in twenty: first the nest, then the school, then the secondary school, and at the top the wānanga, the Māori tertiary institutions. This guide explains each name word by word, how each began, how they work today according to the law and the people who run them, and the everyday Māori words for school, teacher and principal.

Updated 23 October 2026 · 11 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

What the names mean

Name	Word by word (Te Aka)	What it is
kōhanga reo	kōhanga ‘nest, nursery’ + reo ‘language, voice’	A Māori-language early childhood centre, run by its whānau. The Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust translates the name as “the language nest”.
kura kaupapa Māori	kura ‘school’ + kaupapa Māori ‘Māori approach, Māori principles’	A state school, usually primary, where te reo Māori is the main language of instruction and the school runs according to Te Aho Matua.
wharekura	whare ‘house’ + kura ‘school’	A Māori-medium secondary school, or the secondary department of a kura.
kura-ā-iwi	kura ‘school’ + ā iwi ‘of the tribe’	A tribal immersion school; see below.
wānanga	to meet and discuss; lore, learning	A Māori tertiary institution.

Kura is the ordinary word for school, so kura kaupapa Māori is literally “Māori-approach school”. Te Aka defines kaupapa Māori as “a philosophical doctrine, incorporating the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values of Māori society”. People often shorten the name to kura kaupapa, which Te Aka glosses as a “primary school operating under Māori custom and using Māori as the medium of instruction”.

Wharekura is older than the schools that carry the name. Te Aka gives it three senses: the traditional house of learning, where tohunga taught esoteric knowledge to selected men; then simply school, school house, as in a 1900 newspaper; and now a “secondary school run on kaupapa Māori principles”. Te Ara records a tradition, from Ngāti Kahungunu, that the first earthly whare wānanga ‘house of learning’ was itself named Wharekura. Te Aka spells the old institution whare kura as two words and adds that “in modern Māori it is written as one word”.

Kōhanga reo: the language nests

The movement was a response to how fast the language was being lost. Te Ara gives the figures: in 1913 over 90% of Māori schoolchildren could speak Māori, and by 1975 fewer than 5% could. The Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust tells the rest. A national hui in Wellington in 1979, with representatives of most iwi and hapū, and another at Ngāruawāhia the following year, settled on kōhanga reo as the urgent response, aimed at whānau and children from birth to six. A small working group of Sir James Henare, Tilly Reedy and John Rangihau coined the name.

The Department of Māori Affairs agreed to a pilot in 1981, and the first kōhanga reo opened at Pukeatua, in Wainuiomata, Wellington, on 13 April 1982. Four more followed in Wellington and Auckland, and by April 1983, the Trust says, there were 112. Growth came from whānau rather than government: Te Ara notes there was little financial help from the state until 1990, yet by 1993 there were more kōhanga reo (819) than kindergartens or playcentres.

How a kōhanga reo works

The Trust sets out four pillars, Ngā Pou e Whā, that every new family is introduced to:

Total immersion in te reo Māori in the kōhanga’s daily operations.
Whānau decision-making, management and responsibility.
Whānau accountability.
The health and wellbeing of the mokopuna ‘children, grandchildren’ and the whānau.

The whānau are the employers of a kōhanga’s staff, and the Ministry of Education classes kōhanga reo as whānau-led services, alongside parent-led ones such as playcentres, rather than teacher-led ones such as kindergartens. Each kōhanga writes its own charter, and kōhanga reo have their own curriculum, Te Whāriki a Te Kōhanga Reo. The two principles of the first pillar that matter most to a parent, Māori only every day and parents learning alongside the children, are quoted in te reo Māori for kids.

The relationship with the state has not been easy. In 2011 the Trust took an urgent claim, Wai 2336, to the Waitangi Tribunal, and the Tribunal’s 2013 report, Matua Rautia, found that the Crown’s early childhood funding, quality measures and regulation had failed to sustain kōhanga reo as places for passing on the language, in breach of the Treaty principles of partnership and equity.

Today: the Ministry of Education’s early childhood census of June 2025 counted 399 licensed kōhanga reo, two fewer than in 2024, and found that kōhanga reo were the second most common kind of service for mokopuna Māori, attended by 17% of the Māori children in licensed early learning. The Trust says more than 50,000 children have been through a kōhanga reo since 1982.

Kura kaupapa Māori: the schools

As the first children left kōhanga reo, Te Ara explains, parents wanted them to go on being educated in Māori. The first kura kaupapa Māori, Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Hoani Waititi, was set up in West Auckland in 1985. As with the kōhanga, parents had to raise the money to run the early kura themselves until the state caught up: kura kaupapa Māori were recognised in the Education Act 1989, and from 1990 the Ministry of Education supported new ones. By 2009 there were 73, with just over 6,000 students.

What the law says a kura kaupapa Māori is

Kura kaupapa Māori are now set up under section 201 of the Education and Training Act 2020. The Act makes them state schools, and before the Minister can establish one, it has to be shown that:

te reo Māori is to be the main language of instruction;
the school is to operate in accordance with Te Aho Matua;
students are to get an education that differs significantly from the one they would get at an ordinary state school.

The Minister must first consult Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa, which the Act names as te kaitiaki o Te Aho Matua, the guardian of Te Aho Matua. Every such school’s name must begin with the words Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o, and section 203 stops any other registered school from using the term in its name. A kura may also turn away a family that does not accept that the school operates according to Te Aho Matua.

Te Aho Matua: the founding document

Te Aho Matua is, in the English explanation published with it, a foundation document “written by the pioneers of Kura Kaupapa Māori” for their kura, a philosophical base for teaching and learning that is written in te reo Māori in a style that “requires interpretation rather than translation”. It entered the law on 17 July 1999, through the Education (Te Aho Matua) Amendment Act 1999. The official version is the Māori text, prepared by Te Rūnanga Nui and published in the New Zealand Gazette, with an English explanation the Rūnanga has approved; the version quoted here was published on 22 February 2008. Te Aka lists its six parts:

Te Ira Tangata: the physical and spiritual nature of the child.
Te Reo: how children will become competent in two languages.
Ngā Iwi: the people who shape a child’s development.
Te Ao: the world around the child.
Āhuatanga Ako: the principles of teaching practice.
Te Tino Uaratanga: the qualities a kura aims to develop in its children.

The part on language explains the immersion that people notice first. Kura kaupapa Māori expect “full competency in Māori and English”, but the language of the kura is to be “for the most part, exclusively Māori”. English comes in when the kura whānau decides, as a general rule once children read and write competently in Māori and show an interest in English, and then with a separate English teacher and a separate space. Mixing the two languages is rejected. The Māori text of that part opens with the lines that are explained in Tōku reo, tōku ohooho.

What is a wharekura?

A wharekura is a Māori-medium secondary school. The Ministry of Education’s glossary defines wharekura as “Māori-medium secondary settings based in and on Māori education philosophies”. Te Ara explains how most came about: many kura started as full primary schools and then added wharekura, secondary departments, so that their students could stay in Māori-medium education to the end of school. Many kura are therefore composite schools, teaching years 1 to 13.

Two more terms come from how new kura are started. Since 2001, Te Ara notes, the Ministry has recognised a kura teina ‘younger sibling school’, a kura that has applied to become a stand-alone school, mentored by an established kura tuakana ‘older sibling school’. Teina and tuakana are the words for a younger and an older sibling of the same sex, explained in Māori family words.

Kura-ā-iwi and other Māori-medium schools

Not every Māori-medium school is a kura kaupapa Māori. The Ministry’s statistics name two peak bodies for Māori-medium schools: Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa, for the Te Aho Matua kura, and Ngā Kura ā Iwi o Aotearoa, for the tribal schools usually called kura-ā-iwi. Te Ara records that in 2011, besides the kura kaupapa Māori, 15 special-character schools offered total immersion, and that Māori-medium education was increasingly being based on iwi identity rather than a general Māori one. Many ordinary schools also run bilingual or immersion classes; Te Aka’s word for a bilingual school is kura reo rua.

The Ministry measures all of this by how much of the week a student is taught in te reo Māori, not by the kind of school:

Level	Taught in te reo Māori	Counted as
1	81–100% of the time	Māori medium
2	51–80%	Māori medium
3	31–50%	Māori language in English medium
4(a)	12–30%	Māori language in English medium
4(b) and 5	Te reo Māori as a separate subject	Māori language in English medium
6	Songs, greetings and simple words only	Not counted as Māori language in education

On 1 July 2025 there were 28,382 students in Māori-medium education, 3.3% of all school students and 4.6% more than a year before, in 362 schools; 124 of those schools had all their eligible students in Māori medium. Of the students, 95.7% identified as Māori.

Wānanga

At the top of the chain are the wānanga, the Māori tertiary institutions. Te Ara dates the first, Te Wānanga o Raukawa in Ōtaki, to 1981, the year before the first kōhanga, founded by Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Toarangatira; Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi followed. The traditional whare wānanga were schools of sacred knowledge for a chosen few, and Te Ara says the last of them were held in the second half of the 19th century. Today whare wānanga is also the ordinary word for a university: the names of each institution are in Māori names of universities.

Māori words for school, teacher and principal

These are the words for the school system itself. Every one is in Te Aka with the meaning given here; for the phrases used inside a classroom, from the roll to praise, see te reo Māori for teachers.

Māori	English	Note
kura	school	Also to be educated, attend school.
kura tuatahi	primary school	tuatahi ‘first’
kura tuarua	secondary school, high school	tuarua ‘second’
kura hiato	composite school	Years 1 to 13 in one school.
wharekura	Māori-medium secondary school	Also the older word for any school.
kaiako	teacher, instructor	From ako ‘to learn, teach’.
tumuaki	principal	Literally the crown of the head; also head, president, chief executive.
tumuaki tuarua	deputy principal	Also vice president.
ākonga	student, pupil, learner	The usual word in schools.
tauira	student, pupil, apprentice	Also pattern, example, model.
akomanga	class; classroom	Also a course of study.
mahi kāinga	homework	mahi ‘work’ + kāinga ‘home’

Two sentences with them: Ko wai te tumuaki? ‘Who is the principal?’ and Kei te kura ngā tamariki. ‘The children are at school.’ Te Aka’s own example for mahi kāinga, from Scotty and Stacey Morrison’s Māori at Home, is Me tango koe i tō mahi kāinga i tō pīkau. ‘Take your homework out of your bag.’

Where the accounts differ

The published accounts of the first kōhanga reo agree on the story and differ on a few details. None of them changes what the words mean.

Detail	Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust	Other official accounts
The first opening	13 April 1982 (its history page; its timeline table says 12 April)	1982 (Te Ara, NZ History)
Where	Pukeatua, Wainuiomata, Wellington	Wainuiomata (Te Ara); “Lower Hutt” (NZ History), the city Wainuiomata belongs to
The first year	112 kōhanga by April 1983; its timeline says 50 opened in the first year	100 new kōhanga in 1983 (Te Ara)
The peak of 819	in 1994	in 1993 (Te Ara)
How many now	more than 400 (its website, October 2026)	399 licensed in June 2025 (Ministry of Education census)

Learning te reo alongside a kōhanga or kura

Kōhanga reo and kura ask a lot of parents who did not grow up with te reo: the Trust’s first pillar is Māori only, and Te Aho Matua expects the whānau to be part of the school. If your child is starting at one, our own te reo Māori course is free on the web and voices every example with Papa Reo’s native te reo recordings, and the words a family uses first at home are in te reo Māori for kids.