ITI Articles

Last newsletter, we wrote about the positive draft definition of the distinctive contribution of private training establishments (PTEs). Apparently some officials started asking around about whether we had seen the final version yet, and now we understand their confusion.

The draft definition distributed by the TEC was generally supported by ITI, with a few issues that we raised in our November newsletter. The final version approved by the Minister of Tertiary Education, was much less satisfactory, but we will leave a detailed response until 2007.

The PTE sector is, however, still in a better position than in April, when Cabinet had not been given any information at all about PTEs. In the intervening months there have been good discussions with politicians and officials, and PTEs do have a larger space in which to operate. ITPs, of course, have a much bigger space in which to operate, but it is performance, not politics, that tends to have the greatest long-term effect. Given that another ITP has just been taken over by a Minister and been given extra crisis financing, ITI members will continue to focus on results for students, employers and the community.