Chris Hipkins: Reform of the vocational education system is a must

Chronic underfunding by National left the vocational education sector in a parlous state, says Education Minister Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Opinion

Education Minister Chris Hipkins responds to former National Party minister of finance Steven Joyce's rose-coloured version of himself as Tertiary Education Minister.

OPINION:

I'm not going to focus too much on how Steven Joyce interprets his own time in the job, despite the obvious fact that his rear-view mirror is misted up.

I do however want to again state the case for change and address the parlous stage National left the vocational education sector in during its most recent stint in Government.

When Labour formed a government in 2017, skills shortages were legion, and projections into the future painted a bleak picture. This was coupled with real concerns among business groups that they and the education sector were not adequately prepared for how people would work in future.

The vocational education sector was not geared up for the challenges that lay ahead. On the job training was funded separately from classroom training, with the two streams often at odds with each other. If a trainee was halfway through classroom training and got nabbed by an employer to finish their training on the job, the polytechnic would have to pay back funding at the end of the year, despite the outcome for the trainee being positive. That meant the polytechnic would get less funding the following year.

Polytechnics also designed their own courses, and there was no requirement for them to be consistent around the country, or with the skill standards an apprentice or on-the-job trainee would have to meet.

This made it hard, and sometimes impossible, for learners to continue their training if they moved location, or had to switch between on-the-job and classroom-based learning. And too many polytechnics were teaching courses that didn't meet the needs of employers – because employers had little or no say in the design of the courses.

Underpinning the confusion that both employers and learners experienced when trying to navigate the system was the chronic underfunding over National's nine years that resulted in Labour having to inject $100 million into the sector to stop several institutions from completely falling over. Not only that, but without change, the sector, ie the taxpayer, was facing increasing deficits in the vicinity of $280m by 2022.

The dire financial situation can be sheeted home to National's short-sighted reaction to the Global Financial Crisis. At a time when a government should invest in businesses, training and people, they did the opposite. In 2009, National cut $500m from tertiary education, and turned the tap off right across the board.

Polytechnics had to cut, cut and cut, putting course quality and opportunities at risk. Firms had to sack apprentices, and as a result New Zealand has massive skills shortages which National had to plug by opening the immigration floodgates. New Zealand is still paying the price for that. While our population soared, National did not fund extra for schools, hospitals or houses, leaving us with an infrastructure crisis that is taking time and hundreds of billions of dollars to catch up with, and human misery that could have been avoided.

Imagine if polytechnics still had to rely on international students to stay afloat as Steven Joyce insisted. Covid would have crushed them and their ability to turn out the skills we need. In fact we're in a much better position to welcome students back in a sustainable way post-Covid.

As a sector leader told me on a recent visit to the US to market New Zealand to international students: having one brand (Te Pukenga) in the market was much more powerful than 16 small, regional-based entities trying to foot it with countries much bigger than ours.

Compare National's approach with how Labour responded to Covid. We made a decision to help employees and businesses through the crisis. We didn't turn our back on people and "left it to the market to fix". We wanted to avoid as much misery as possible and to tie people to their employers at a time of massive worry and fear.

The result is record low unemployment, an economy that has stood up well against that of other countries, record training enrolments in 2020 and, crucially, more working apprentices than at any time in recent history, including more women, Maori and Pasifika.

The reform of vocational education is four-fifths of the way there in replacing National's model on a shoestring with one that's more connected, higher quality, closer to business and more attuned to the needs of learners. It's a complex transition, which at its heart pits a stronger New Zealand Inc. against the old National Party model of regions fighting with each other for ever-diminishing resources. Each region will gain but not at the expense of others.

National used to say it was "ambitious for New Zealand", but ambition requires sustained effort and determination. This Government has those qualities and I'm excited about the future for vocational education.