National slams Te Pūkenga polytech reforms

The Government was warned by education leaders that the New Zealand-wide mega polytech Te Pūkenga was the wrong model for Aotearoa, says National’s tertiary education spokesperson Penny Simmonds.

Speaking yesterday, the former long-term chief executive at the Southern Institute of Technology said a recent critical Tertiary Education Commission report to Education Minister Chris Hipkins bore out those concerns. It warned of a ballooning $110 million deficit as its chief executive is on personal leave.

The minister ‘‘has pulled the whole sector down to the lowest common denominator’’, she said.

Simmonds said senior sector CEOs, including herself, had warned Hipkins the model for Hamilton-headquartered Te Pūkenga was wrong and their warnings had ‘‘come to pass’’.

The reforms had failed to address the problems of institutions having difficulties while the good performers had lost incentive to do well because they were now part of an allinclusive entity, she claimed.

Also, around 180 head office jobs had been established.

‘‘He has created this massive bureaucracy at head office,’’ she said.

‘‘This is a whole new layer of non-teaching bureaucracy.’’

There was also talk of up to 600 redundancies in the sector, although this had not been confirmed.

Simmonds said about $200m had been spent setting up Te Pūkenga and there was concern that the potential $110m deficit could be even higher.

She had no additional information on why Te Pūkenga CEO Stephen Town had gone on special leave but added: ‘‘I think the minister has set Te Pūkenga an unachievable task, so it’s always going to fail regardless of who is leading it.’’

National planned to keep asking written and oral parliamentary questions about Te Pūkenga and to push for going back to the old system and deal individually with institutions facing problems. That should have been the way things were handled in the first place, Simmonds said.

‘‘I think the minister has set Te Pūkenga an unachievable task’’ Penny Simmonds National’s tertiary education spokesperson