Every connection counts
Te Rito supports a full understanding of learners' needs by making their attendance, achievement and participation information available in one place.
It connects schools, learners and their whānau* with learning information from multiple systems in a single view.
Connecting your school’s SMS to Te Rito is the first step. It means information can be shared safely and easily when students move from one school to another – it's available for other connected schools to access from the day of enrolment, even if they use a different SMS.
Register for Te Rito at Connect your SMS to Te Rito
*Parent access will be piloted later in 2025.
Sharing Te Rito across the motu
Sector working groups Te Rau Whakatupu Māori and Te Rau Whakatupu Auraki (Ngā Rau Whakatupu), in partnership with the Ministry, are well underway with the rollout of Te Rito to New Zealand kura and schools.
Te Rito has:
- Nearly 840 schools signed up, and 420 of them have connected their SMS.
- Over 161,000 learner records, and as more schools connect, the records increase.
- More than 22,000 school staff connected, plus students at pilot schools, with hundreds more signing up for access and use.
- Expanded SMS data and will soon have NCEA data, increasing the amount of information displayed.
- More enhancements including to inter-school collaboration and pre-enrolment functionality.
- An approved Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) validating the extremely high standard to which information is protected.
- Full IT Certification and Accreditation (C&A) and Safer Technologies for Schools (ST4S) badging.
Our whakatauāki
Me tiaki te mana o te tamaiti me tōna whānau
Protect the mana of the child and their family
Ākonga and learners’ Information is taonga and must be protected. Te Rito’s whakatauāki acknowledges this and underpins everything we do.
The name Te Rito was gifted to us by Te Aupōuri, Aotearoa's second most northern iwi. It represents the baby flax at the heart of the harakeke, where it is secure and protected as it grows and flourishes – reflecting our protection of information as taonga.
We thank Te Aupouri and Te Rau Whakatupu Māori and recognise their knowledge and contribution for the benefit of our ākonga and learners.
Our commitment to Te Ao Māori
We are committed to working with Māori and iwi in a way that reflects our Treaty partnership and honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Te Rau Whakatupu Māori leads in the design and implementation of Te Rito and we seek advice and input from the Mātauranga Iwi Leaders’ Group.
For iwi that sit outside this forum, we work with our Te Mahau regional teams, recognising each iwi has its own aspirations and interests.
At the heart of our engagement is our recognition that Māori wish to exercise sovereignty over the data held on ākonga by educators and education agencies.
