Anika Ngaamo competing in Ngā Whakataetae Manu Kōrero ki Waitaha 2019.

We congratulate Anika Ngaamo for her speech at the regional secondary school's speech competition in Christchurch.

On Friday 28th June in Lincoln Anika Ngaamo, one of our students, competed in Ngā Whakataetae Manu Kōrero ki Waitaha 2019. This is the annual regional speech competition made up of schools all around the Canterbury, West Coast regions and is a very big achievement. If competitors win their regional competition then they qualify to compete in the nationals.

The competition is made up of four sections: 

• Pei Te Hurinui for Senior Māori, 
• Korimako for Senior English, 
• Rāwhiti Ihaka for Junior Māori and 
• Sir Turi Carroll for Junior English.

Five topics are given to speakers in each section to choose from, these are changed each year. The Olympic Scoring System is used for scoring each contestants speech. Under this system five judges are used to allocate scores for each speaker. The top and bottom scores are eliminated leaving the remaining scores to be totalled for a final score. A penalty of 10 points is deducted for any use of written aids i.e. cue cards, prompts etc...

12 minutes of speaking time is allocated to Māori speakers and 6 minutes for English speakers. While this might seem like a short amount of time, preparation is another story.

Students take two to six months to prepare themselves to take the stage.