‘Mega polytech’ leaders discuss plan to shake up system
New Zealand’s vocational education system would not have survived the next decade, and its shakeup aimed to give all learners an equal chance of success, says a leader of the new polytechnic model.
Warwick Quinn, one of six deputy chief executives for Te Pu¯kenga/NZ Institute of Skills and Technology, made the comments at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) on Thursday, visiting as part of consultation on an operating model for the fledgling national entity.
NMIT and New Zealand’s 15 other institutes of technology and polytechnics became subsidiaries of Te Pu¯kenga in April last year.
Quinn said Te Pu¯kenga had developed seven ‘‘service concepts’’ since his appointment as deputy chief executive of employer journey and experience six months ago.
These included greater support for learners, providing a good work experience for apprentices, ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori hubs, and understanding the divide between rural and urban centres, including support for remote learning.
The vocational education system needed change, given that groups such as Ma¯ori, Pasifika, and disabled people were not completing or succeeding in the system as well as other groups, Quinn said.
Only 15 per cent of firms in the industry training organisation environment used the vocational educational system as their training system, yet 100 per cent of firms trained, he said.
Forty per cent of apprentices dropped out of the system in the first 18 months.
To date, New Zealand’s 16 polytechs and institutes of technology, 11 industry training organisations, and more than 400 private training establishments all competed with each other, he said.
‘‘The system was effectively set up as . . . survival of the fittest. And as a result of that it had winners and losers,’’ Quinn said.
Bring them together would create best practice and a common experience, he said.
‘‘So that everybody in the system has an equal chance of success no matter where you come from ... who you are.’’
Regarding concerns that NMIT might be less able to serve the needs of local employers when it became part of a national entity, the opposite was true, Quinn said.
‘‘The whole intention is to get much closer to the regions.’’
The Government had set up 16 regional skills leadership groups to help support and promote the regions, he said.
‘‘We need to be really closely connected with them to make sure that we deliver locally what the local employers and environment communities want . . . Playing to your strengths to really become a hub of that expertise while using your local employers and experts is something that we’re really keen to encourage.’’
Quinn, a former chief executive of the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation, which manages apprenticeships for the construction industry, said exciting opportunities for NMIT included expansion of its construction department, which had moved to the Richmond campus.
As one entity, employers and apprentices could access that facility in a way they couldn’t before, he said. Apprentices on the work site would be able to have ‘‘off-job learning’’ in areas where they struggled, which hadn’t previously happened because of competition, he said.
‘‘To be able to leverage each others’ strengths is just incredible.
‘‘And for those learners in the classroom, they can now have access to all of the employers that the ITOs have relationships with on a daily basis.’’
Te Pu¯kenga’s size meant the entities didn’t have to always try to do things separately, thus avoiding duplication.
NMIT chief executive Wayne Jackson said the institute ‘‘saw the value of using the integrated assets of the network to benefit our learners, and to ensure we continue to meet our region’s needs for vocational education’’.