PGDip Bilingual Education | Pacific & Maori Language Specialist | Student Support Leader | Te Reo Maori & Reo Kuki Airani Speaker | Whakapapa: Rarotonga, Samoa, Tahiti & beyond
James Uripuati brings something genuinely rare to educational settings: deep fluency across multiple languages, cultures, and worldviews, combined with an understanding of what it means for Pacific and Maori learners to see themselves reflected in the systems that are supposed to support them. His whakapapa spans Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Atiu, Mauke, Rurutu, Tahiti, and Samoa, and he speaks both te reo Maori and Reo Kuki Airani with the fluency that only comes from living within those languages.
With a PGDip in Bilingual Education and a career in student support and language practice, he has built his work around a core conviction: that learners should be able to navigate their education without losing connection to who they are. That means designing support systems and learning environments that are culturally responsive not as an add-on but as a structural commitment.
At academyEX, he brings that multilingual, multicultural depth to the MCE programme, helping educators understand what genuine inclusion looks like when the students in front of them carry languages and knowledge systems that the mainstream curriculum was not designed to hold.