One of the Government’s election promises was to disband the much lambasted Te Pūkenga ‘mega-polytech’, which was formed under the last Government, beginning operations in April 2020.
Te Pūkenga brought the country’s 16 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics together, including our own EIT Te Aho A Māui, as well as nine industry training organisations (ITOs). Te Pūkenga has been a regular in the news cycle over the last four years, criticized for its frequent turnover of CEs, cost over-runs, and dwindling enrolments. Its establishment coincided with the arrival of COVID-19, which can’t have helped matters.
The establishment of Te Pūkenga was not the only change to the vocational and education training (VET) system. In 2021, six workforce development councils were established to ensure the VET system met industry needs. Their role was to set standards, develop qualifications, and help shape the curriculum of vocational education. These too are for the chop, proposed to be reformed into new standards setting organisations.
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds said earlier this month the Government is asking for input on “reforms to replace the failed Te Pūkenga experiment with a financially sustainable, regionally responsive vocational education and training system that delivers the skills and training New Zealand needs”. A short six-week consultation proposal was announced last week.
The Government is proposing that institutes with a pathway to financial sustainability will be allowed to stand alone while others will be grouped together in a federation, supported by Open Polytechnic. Little practical detail as to how this might work has been provided.
The HB Regional Economic Development Agency (REDA) has been asked by our regional leadership group, the Matariki Governance Group, to coordinate a regional submisson on the proposed changes. We have teamed up with Gisborne’s Trust Tairāwhiti to work on a proposal that includes the voices of significant businesses in our regions. Voices include industry groupings, businesses, local government, community organisations, and of course iwi Māori, considering that our regions’ populations have a higher proportion of Māori learners than other parts of New Zealand.
Worryingly, the proposal is all but silent on the Government’s obligations to mana whenua under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as outlined in the Education and Training Act 2020. The proposal is not silent, however, on plans to remove equity funding, which would disportionately affect and, ultimately disadvantage, many of our learners, including those with low prior achievement, disabled learners, and Māori and Pacific learners.
Back during the last restructure proposal in 2019, Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti strongly argued for maintainining regional autonomy over EIT. EIT had long been financially viable and brought cash reserves of over $30 million into Te Pūkenga. We will be asking, in our submission, for reassurance that the cash reserves held by EIT, and any accrued interest, will be available for reinvestment in our regions.
As well as being financially sustainable, EIT continues to have a strong track record where it matters most: delivering to learners and supporting industry and the wider community.
EIT’s retention of first year students from 2022 into 2023 was the highest among all New Zealand’s polytechnics despite Cyclone Gabrielle, which flooded the Taradale campus and disrupted operations in Tairāwhiti and EIT’s Auckland campus. First year student retention was 81% against a national average of 65%. EIT was also above the national average in the three other indicators of learner achievement and success: course completion, progression, and qualification completion.
A well-functioning and high-quality VET system is essential if we want to continue building a workforce for today and the future. There need to be learning opportunities for learners at all levels in a range of environments from the classroom to the workplace. We need to let education and training providers work closely with industry to ensure they meet their needs, and we need to do what it takes to give all our learners the best chance possible to succeed.
Most of all, we need to stop embarking on poorly thought through and poorly implemented ‘experiments’.
As a previous EIT lecturer in Business Studies (12 years) I welcome the idea of cancelling Te Putenga and reverting to the original systems that were in place at EIT. They worked incredibly well and were appreciated by both students and employers.