Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds delivered her much anticipated dismantling of the failed Te Pukenga centralised model.
While Otago has not quite made the grade as a fully autonomous entity just yet, it is to have its own board of local education and industry experts to guide course delivery in tune with Otago skills needs. Once back on financial solid ground, it will become fully autonomous.
As a long-standing advocate for Telford, in Balclutha, New Zealand’s only remaining residential agricultural training facility, I was delighted to hear Ms Simmonds confirm her commitment to its future.
From New Zealand First’s perspective, vocational education has long been marginalised as an educational pathway.
The entire school system is geared towards an academic pathway, with university entrance the ultimate outcome incentivised. It is the metric schools measure and promote themselves with. This is despite only 30% of students going on to study at university.
This is not to dismiss the importance of university education, of particular importance to Dunedin given the University of Otago is such a foundation stone of our city. These reforms are to acknowledge that for the majority of high school graduates, it is not a pathway they ultimately choose.
It is critical they have a modern, fit-for-purpose and financially viable vocational training pathway to allow these students, and workers looking to retrain, to get into the trades and service industries. New Zealand needs builders, plumbers, nurses, chefs and electricians just as much as we need university-trained doctors and economists, for example.
The list of skills deemed worthy of being prioritised through our immigration system is an indictment on our vocational training performance as a country — especially so at a time when 160,000 New Zealanders are on the jobseeker benefit.
We are designing a polytechnic model that prioritises regionally relevant skills training and a pathway to jobs that are in demand. They will be codesigned alongside employers to make sure the qualifications are relevant and fit for purpose. New Zealand is relying on it.
