A record number of tamariki graduated this week from the Te Mātāpuna Mātātahi | Children’s University, which is delivered via a partnership between Lincoln University and the University of Canterbury.
Over two consecutive nights (25-26 November), 362 children, aged from seven to 14, crossed the stage of the James Hay Theatre in the Christchurch Town Hall to accept their graduation certificates.
Te Mātāpuna Mātātahi | Children’s University (CU) is an internationally renowned outreach programme and the only one of its kind in the country. This is the second year it has operated in Canterbury.
CU fosters a community of lifelong learners, raising aspirations for higher education, with children joining the programme through their school or runanga and receiving a Passport to Learning.
The tamariki fill their passports with hours of learning outside the classroom by visiting learning destinations, taking part in university campus experiences and engaging in online activities. There are 122 learning destinations in Canterbury, including libraries, museums, galleries and wildlife parks.
Once children reach set milestones, they are invited to graduate at the Christchurch Town Hall.
This year, the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown hit just as children were receiving their passports, so they were unable to visit learning destinations. Instead, they participated in a range of online activities, with university academics developing tasks for the children to help them attain their hours. These included science experiments, history explorations and maths puzzles.
Canterbury children completed 3,466 online activities and undertook a total of 19,537 hours of learning.
For more information, see our CU webpage.
