ITI Articles

ITI has focused on the government's tertiary education reforms over the last month. While we were disappointed with the initial direction of the reforms, we feel that some good progress has been made. Our initial reaction is described below, and is followed by our recommendations to the government. The full submission is available here.

1.The reforms process seems to have sidelined the private training establishment (PTE) sector to date, focussing instead on public tertiary education institutions and particularly institutes of technology and polytechnics. We proposed a real engagement process to address this, and note with thanks the TEC’s willingness to take up that challenge in recent days, but we also seek engagement from the Minister and other agencies.

2. Putting aside the government’s preference for PTEs to complement public tertiary education providers, those private providers that have jumped through the government’s assessment of strategic relevance hoops are still excluded from any meaningful role. This is important, because those providers have the highest proven performance in the tertiary education sector and meet all of the government’s quality, relevance and value for money requirements.

Our key recommendations are summarised below.

1. We propose that Ministers and officials engage with the PTE sector on a similar basis as they are engaging with universities and ITPs, to ensure that the reforms are developed in an informed manner. (We note with thanks that the TEC broadly agreed to such an approach on 11 May, but we also seek engagement from the Minister and other agencies.)

2. The high performance and TES/STEP alignment of PTEs should be specifically acknowledged in the Cabinet decision-making process.

3. The Government-PTE sector engagement process should focus initially on the distinctive contributions of PTEs, the outcomes that they achieve and ways to enhance both through the tertiary education reforms, including by capability building initiatives.

4. Discussions should run concurrently for all sectors’ distinctive contributions, even if implementation is done at different speeds. This will reduce the risk of unintended policy effects and improve system cohesion.

5. ITI recommends that no detailed decisions on funding systems be taken on the basis of the material consulted on to date, as there are simply too many potential permutations. ITI does broadly support a funding system based on government’s expressed outcomes, other stakeholders’ needs, the TEO’s distinctive contribution and, most importantly, the TEO’s performance.

6. The Government should provide clarification about whether any new quality proposals are being put forward. ITI is reasonably happy with the proposed quality assurance requirements, but decisions made previously by Cabinet are already leading to a revision of NZQA’s Quality Assurance Standard 1, which covers most of the issues. We need to know if anything else is being intended.