Former Te Pūkenga exec calls for commissioner
A former top executive at under-fire mega polytechnic Te Pū kenga has revealed she resigned last year after losing ‘‘trust and confidence’’ in the organisation where she alleges the atmosphere resembled ‘‘Disneyland’’ at times.
Merran Davis is also calling for the Te Pū kenga board to be replaced by a Government-appointed commissioner and for the senior management team to be replaced.
Davis – a key whistleblower in raising issues about problems at Wintec and now a Hamilton-based education consultant – said she left a high-paid deputy chief executive transformation and transition job at Te Pū kenga last year over wideranging concerns about its performance.
Te Pū kenga is now facing a range of issues, including a ballooning $110 million-plus annual deficit and potential redundancies.
In an email to board members in May 2021 about her reasons for leaving, the former Unitec chief executive said: ‘‘I have lost trust and confidence in the governance and leadership of Te Pū kenga and don’t believe it is currently operating at a level needed to ensure a successful national transformation of the scale required in the agreed timeline.’’
Davis said in the email she had been committed to the reform ‘‘for decades’’ and remained so, but she needed to resign ‘‘to retain my credibility and be true to my own values’’.
In an interview with Stuff yesterday, Davis called for Education Minister Chris Hipkins to replace the board with a commissioner and for the management team to be replaced as well.
It would bring ‘‘fresh eyes, focus and objectivity’’, she said.
‘‘Given my experience at Te Pū kenga, I have no confidence in the current leadership to fix problems given where things are at now.’’
A reshuffle would help ensure Te Pū kenga got ‘‘the right skills, skillset and appropriate focus’’.
Davis said it would also help restore trust and credibility with the tertiary education sector and relevant stakeholders.
She said she’d had negative feedback from Unitec staff and contacts in South Island polytechs about the current leadership. She believed this was a symptom of widespread disaffection nationally with how reforms were progressing.
On what her concerns were during her eight months at Te Pū kenga, Davis said: ‘‘There wasn’t a good understanding of the current position of the sector and what was needed to actually transition and transform it to meet the minister’s expectations.’’
She felt she needed to resign to protect her integrity and because she was concerned she might be made a scapegoat for any failings ‘‘as the only person with recent tertiary sector experience on the senior leadership team’’.
There was also friction caused by what was happening at Unitec, where she’d worked previously.
Asked why she didn’t try to tough things out, she said: ‘‘I was not being listened to and I was being kept out of important discussions.’’
This in part reflected a very ‘‘siloed’’ approach to the way people were working together to establish Te Pū kenga. She said she couldn’t believe how poor the ‘‘coherence and integration’’ of the leadership team was.
At times she felt ‘‘it’s like everyone is in Disneyland’’. When she raised this sort of thought people would not appear to realise the clock was ticking on reform or have an
appropriate sense of urgency.
Davis pointed to a publicly available consultants’ report dated March this year for Te Pū kenga and the Tertiary Education Commission raising various concerns about progress towards Te Pū kenga’s goals.
She suspected the minister would not agree to a commissioner, despite them being used at the likes of the old Waikato District Health Board and Unitec.
But she believed such an appointment could help tackle a ballooning deficit and various delays in getting Te Pū kenga ready to be a fully integrated national organisation by year’s end.
In a message to staff last week, Te Pū kenga’s acting chief executive, Peter Winder, ruled out seeking an extension to the December 31 deadline for achieving that target.
Davis didn’t believe the target could be met properly: ‘‘Not to meet the minister’s letter of expectations.’’
Winder’s email outlined a range of specific actions aimed at sorting out the organisation’s issues, including ‘‘identifying significant savings to address our difficult financial position’’.
Minister Hipkins has said this month that he had been clear the projected deficit was too high and more work was needed on this.
‘‘I’ve made my expectations clear and know Te Pū kenga is working hard on the transition,’’ he said.