Unlike UCOL, SIT has a zero-fees scheme, which applies to the base tuition fee attached to each eligible programme of study.
It had been able to offer that thanks to community investment, Simmonds said.
“I had the real privilege in Invercargill of having a community that bought into our polytechnic as an economic development initiative for our region.
“They put $7.25 million in to get the zero-fees scheme going and they put big amounts of funding in to help with attracting international students to Invercargill because we had skill shortages.
“It’s the community using the polytechnic as a solution to some of the other issues that you might have.”
It was reported last month UCOL Te Pukenga Whanganui would not run hairdressing, cookery Level 4, security and the NZ Certificate of Music courses this year.
There were 259 equivalent fulltime students in Whanganui compared with 335 at the same time last year.
Te Pūkenga had cost $200m since the merger began three years ago and that hadn’t gone on marketing, students or staff, Simmonds said.
The country’s 16 polytechnic institutions are now under the Te Pūkenga banner.
“When you’re preoccupied with a restructuring of that scale, the focus goes away from growth in areas like Whanganui.
“Centralisation means that in the periphery — around the regions — they just get forgotten.”
Simmonds said National would not continue with the merger if it got into government.
Autonomy would return to the regions, but that meant Whanganui needed to take responsibility and be accountable for making sure its polytechnic grew.
“I don’t see us going back to 16 polytechs as before. We’ll probably go back to about 10,” Simmonds said.
“Whanganui needs to think about where they see themselves. Going it alone is probably not sustainable, but I’m not going to dictate that to a town who might want to take ownership.”
An option she was looking at was putting smaller institutions under the umbrella of the Open Polytechnic.
That allowed smaller class sizes on campus, with some theory components delivered via distance learning.
“The reality is there’s not going to be lots more money,” Simmonds said.
“There is some money to repurpose but there’s not going to be big lots because the cupboard is going to be bare when we get in, we know that.”
Simmonds is also the party’s spokeswoman for early childhood education.
New Zealand was dealing with a desperate shortage of ECE teachers, yet centres needed an over-80 per cent qualification rate among its teachers to be eligible for Quality Funding from the Government, she said.
“As we do in schools, should we be looking at having an assistant teacher or teacher aide-type qualification?
“You’ve got things like Level 4 carer certificates, nanny qualifications, enrolled nurse qualifications, and at the moment they can’t be recognised. Yet, there’s a role for those people within an ECE sector.”
Administrative and regulatory compliance in the sector also needed to be looked at.
One example was nutritional food audits.
“That is a reasonable cost being borne by those ECE centres, so some are not providing food rather than having to go through that audit process,” Simmonds said.
“Kids are being sent along with lunch that is far less nutritional than what was being provided by the centre. You’re getting unworkable regulations that are having unintended consequences.
“We have to look at where silly things like that are happening.”
