National makes $225m training pledge

National has promised to give tertiary educators $4000 for every unemployed person who gets retrained and into a new job.

The incentive scheme, announced by National leader Judith Collins during a trip to Nelson yesterday, would come with a small business mentoring programmes, dedicated ‘‘job coaches’’ at Work and Income offices, and a pledge to double the size of New Zealand’s tech sector within a decade.

Collins said a ‘‘fresh approach’’ was needed to retrain Kiwis turfed out of work, and grow the country out of the economic crisis that has come with Covid-19.

The ‘‘SkillStart’’ scheme, which would cost $120 million over four years, would be designed to incentivise tertiary training providers, such as polytechnics, to create courses to get people into work, the party’s policy document said.

The $4000 payments to the institutions would help 30,000 people into work. The institution would be eligible for the payment if the employed person lasted 90 days in the job, and had previously been unemployed or on a government benefit for three months before taking the course.

National would also unwind the Labour-led Government’s reforms of the vocational training sector within 100 days.

Alongside National’s SkillStart scheme would be a $25m, 12-week ‘‘small business builder’’ mentoring programme, that would have 5000 people receive up to 20 hours of business mentoring, alongside access to online modules and webinars.

Another $20m would be spent over four years on subsidising management training and business advisers for small businesses.

Funding of $28m over four years would be again provided to ‘‘ICT graduate schools’’, and the party plans to fund 1000 tertiary scholarships each year for students at low-decile colleges to take up science, technology, engineering or mathematics [STEM] undergraduate degrees. This would cost $10m over four years.

A ‘‘global PhD’’ scholarship scheme would be created in hope of recruiting 50 STEM PhD candidates from major universities to spend six months in New Zealand. This would cost $12m over four years.