LINDSAY MITCHELL: Is Whanau Ora lifting student attendance?

I was asked the following question via Family First: "How is the Whānau Ora network developing and what are its prospects. In particular, is it helping school attendance effectively for Maori and Pacific island pupils?"

Whānau Ora was introduced in 2010 resulting from the 2008 Confidence and Supply Agreement between the National Government and the Māori Party, the underlying principle being, it's not individuals who need access to services, but whānau. It is very much a 'by Maori, for Maori' approach.

Getting a handle on the Whanau Ora organisational structure is not easy. The funding provided annually was in the region of $150-180 million, with three commissioning agencies - one in the North Island, one in the South and one for Pacific people.

The North Island agency was known as the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) erroneously implying an umbrella status. The Chief Executive of WOCA was John Tamihere (who also heads one of WOCA's 'partner' organisations, the Waipareira Trust, also sometimes confusingly referred to as a commissioning agency.)

That three-agency structure remained until mid 2025.

From an outsider's perspective, reporting on achievement, such as like school attendance, would be an implicit requirement. But specific data-based outcomes are thin on the ground.

An example of how WOCA reports outcomes follows. 

One of WOCA's programmes is Whanau Direct, which offers annual tailored investments of up to $1,000 in value per whānau. The most recent 'outcomes' infographic available is 2018/19.

The reporting on 'outcomes' is no more than a description of where monies were allocated, geographically, demographically and by domain, combined with a tacit assumption (or self-reporting) that the expenditure of money improved or increased something.

Another WOCA report pertaining to the Incredible Years Parenting Programme for Maori (run by the Waipareira Trust for more than six years) used the Social Return On Investment (SRIO) methodology and found:

"This SROI analysis has demonstrated that the Incredible Years Parenting Programme at Waipareira has a positive impact on people’s lives. It exhibits significant social, environmental and economic value, for a wide range of stakeholders creating a value of $1,815,855.75 over 3 years. The value created exceeds the investment and, for each $1 invested, $3.75 of value is created."

To understand how value is measured you would need to read the full report. I confess to being unconvinced so asked AI about the shortcomings of SROI. The response made more sense than the concept:

"Social Return on Investment (SROI) is a framework used to measure and quantify social and environmental impact in monetary terms. Its primary shortcomings include a reliance on highly subjective financial proxies, vulnerability to false precision, and high implementation costs that disproportionately disadvantage smaller organizations."

So I searched further for proof of concrete results in WOCA Annual Report 2024/25. It contains the following remarks made by the Chair and the Chief Executive.

Chair Merepeke Rakawa-Tait writes:

As the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency contract concludes in 2025, and with the tenure of most of our Board members also ending, we recognise this moment as the closing of an era. 

This report is written at a time of deep grief for our organisation. After more than a decade, Whānau Ora Commissioning funding has been withdrawn. It is a bitter blow – not because we lacked results, but because we succeeded too well. We proved that Māori could lead our own solutions, commission our own services, and design futures where whānau thrived.

Chief Executive John Tamihere writes:

Whānau Ora was never a government idea – it was born of our people, by our people, for our people. Over the last decade, we proved it works. Whānau Ora has lifted whānau from dependency to determination, from despair to dignity. And because of that success, it has now been taken from us.

Both are confident they were making a huge difference.

But what about specifics? Among the government's official targets are: reducing violent crime, reducing the number of people on a Jobseeker benefit, and increasing student attendance.

I searched the following terms in the report:

violent crime

jobseeker

benefits

student

attendance

absenteeism

Each delivered '0 result'.

Outcomes are expressed in terms of number of engagements, the odd case study, alongside broad-based expressions of improved lives and expectations.

This type of ongoing reporting was obviously insufficient to satisfy the new government post 2023.

In December 2025 Te Puni Kōkiri chief executive Dave Samuels said that "Whānau Ora has been constrained not by a lack of evidence, but by the type of evidence successive governments have demanded."

According to Te Ao Maori News, "Samuels said the core difficulty has been meeting the Government’s strict attribution requirements, which rely on proving, through the Integrated Data Infrastructure, that a particular Whānau Ora investment directly caused a specific measurable outcome...Samuels, who retires next year, said integrating Whānau Ora data into the Government’s investment system gives the kaupapa its best chance in years to secure meaningful future funding."

The desire for social services to be designed and led 'by Maori, for Maori'  lives another day.

In the meantime, contrary to claims from the likes of Willie Jackson, who says, "All targeted Māori funding has disappeared and continues to disappear," Whanau Ora funding continues but under four new commissioning agencies (one, Pacific). This is Whanau Ora 2.0 .

It follows the introduction of competitive tendering (which followed not only a lack of satisfactory results-reporting but exceedingly high expenditure on certain staff and conflicts of interests.) 

Whether the new agencies have a better grasp and ability to deliver on what the government is looking for by way of accountability and achievement remains to be seen.

In relation to the second part of the question posed, full attendance rates have recently improved for both Maori and Pacific students:

This improvement might have something to do with the Whanau Ora network (though Maori and Pacific attendance rates generally declined through 2015 to 2021) but it's impossible to know unless the commissioning agencies report specifically on this outcome for those families it has engaged with.

The Ministry of Education has been conducting an information campaign, including using social media, to prioritise attendance.

The Ministry of Education also funds school attendance services. Some contracted iwi say they are using the whanau ora philosophy - focusing on the whole family as opposed to just the student - and are achieving amazing results.

Frustratingly, I cannot provide a conclusive answer to the question posed.

What I would say however is that spending money on remedial social services to correct problems largely caused by welfarism, is like fighting fire with a weak water hose in one hand while pouring from a petrol can with the other.