By Russell Palmer of RNZ
The Tertiary Education Union is calling the Government’s disestablishment of Te Pūkenga a “disaster for regional New Zealand”.
Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds joined Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Monday to announce 10 polytechnics were being re-established.
The Southern Institute of Technology, of which Simmonds was chief executive for 23 years, was one of them as was Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, after Nelson Mayor Nick Smith appealed for the Government to keep it independent.
Smith was delighted, saying the Government’s announcement is “the best news for Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough”.
“We are one of New Zealand’s most geographically isolated regions, meaning that, for many students who cannot relocate for financial or family reasons, NMIT is the only opportunity for them to upskill and gain a tertiary education,” he said in a written statement.
“There is now a big job ahead to rebuild NMIT. We look forward to the passage of the legislation and the appointment of a new polytechnic council. Key steps will be re-establishing links with local industry and redeveloping NMIT’s international brand and market.”
Others were not so lucky. The Open Polytechnic will absorb Otago Polytechnic and UCOL, becoming a “federation” that offers online resources, an academic board and other services to those polytechs struggling with money.
Otago Polytechnic executive director Megan Pōtiki said it was “deeply disappointed” to be included in the federation model.
“Otago Polytechnic currently boasts one of the highest learner completion rates in the polytechnic sector, and we are concerned that the federation model would dilute this offering and impact our organisation’s proud reputation and future success. The federation model risks undermining our learner success rates and the quality of teaching ... and ultimately risks undermining our independence and future viability as a regional institution.”
Simmonds said polytechs in four other regions – Northland, Taranaki, Wellington and the West Coast – were facing “unique challenges” and needed to show a path to financial viability within a year or face being merged or closed.
Tertiary Education Union national secretary Sandra Grey told RNZ the sector had been suffering for 20 years and had become a political football. She said the minister’s announcement was just a return to a model that was failing.
“This Government has just exacerbated i t... leaving four out in the cold and saying ‘you’ll just have to do something radically different, like just do online learning then you’ll be financially viable’ – that’s a pretty cruel thing to do to communities.
“That doesn’t work so well when what you’re teaching is cookery or carpentry. They’re not easy to teach online.”
She said most of the four facing an uncertain future were in rural areas which did not have universities and depended on polytechnics to become a hub of learning and industry.
The Government’s plan, she said, would only deepen the divide between rural and urban learning.
The former Industry Training Organisations would be replaced with Industry Skills Boards, which would set standards for industry training, develop qualifications, and endorse the programmes that would lead to them.
The minister said they would be supported with Quality Assurance to ensure consistency – saying industries would now have a bigger say.
Grey, however, said the plan was problematic because it would require students to go to a temporary holding place for two years – and the Government had halved the funding for it.
“This Government keeps claiming it’s giving communities and industry a big say in their future and yet it’s making all the decisions for them, taking away all the money from them.
“They’re not thinking about whether it’s genuinely going to serve industry or genuinely serve community, I think they’ve been warned this is not going to work for anyone, they’re just going to go ahead because they made a promise. They could renege on that promise, we’d be quite happy if they turned around.
“What we’ve got to appreciate is these polytechnics are built up over five decades, two generations have put energy, time, taxpayer money into building their polytechnics. These belong to New Zealanders, these polytechnics – and this Government is just running roughshod over communities and taking decisions for them and making it impossible to have good training in small communities.
“The long-term cost of people missing out on education is poorer health outcomes for people – so more money spent on the health system – poor outcomes socially because people don’t get jobs, and lost tax revenue because when people don’t train they don’t get jobs and they don’t contribute to the tax take.
“We all lose out when communities lose out and when students don’t have courses, this is a disaster if we don’t turn it around.”
Labour’s leader Chris Hipkins was the education minister who launched Te Pūkenga, and acknowledged the merger faced difficulties but said the Government was turning the system upside down.
“Te Pūkenga took too long to get off the ground in my view, but they turned a surplus last year. I think to turn the whole system upside down all over again right at a time when we need to be increasing the number of people we’re training is a bit crazy.”
- RNZ