Labour leader Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced she would establish the award for pupils to encourage schools to support pupils who favoured vocational courses.
Each top pupil would receive $2000. Labour estimated 500 pupils would receive the award each year, at an annual cost of $1million.
''We know there's a huge demand for trades workers, particularly in the building sector where construction is now going into reverse due, in part, to a lack of workers.''
Otago-Southland Employers Association chief executive Virginia Nicholls called Ms Ardern's encouragement a ''good approach'' to promoting the importance of vocational courses to young people.
There was concern students straight out of school, and those coming from tertiary providers, were not always ready for employment. Industry would like to see the schools working alongside them on the employability skills framework.
Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive Dougal McGowan said
schools, polytechnics and employers needed to work together to ensure the skills needed were provided.
The failure rate of apprentices was high and work should be put into ensuring employers received the right sort of support to keep the apprentices in training.
The $2000 was a tiny amount of the total needed for people in training, he said.
Mrs Nicholls said because many students would do a pre-trade year at polytechnic before starting their apprenticeship, employers would like the selection process for the excellence award to be done in conjunction with the high school and the local polytechnic to ensure the award went to the right student.
Joiners had expressed concern with recent changes to their apprenticeship training.
The apprentice had been taken on for three years in the workplace and attended polytechnic three weeks a year every year of the apprenticeship. That had worked well.
Recent changes meant less time spent at the polytechnic and more assessment at the joiners' workplace.
''This is placing more work on employers and there is concern ... [the changes may not provide] as much continuity with the apprentice training.
''This is increasing the workload for employers which make makes some think twice about taking on apprentices.''
The association had been working with BusinessNZ, the Ministry of Education and Careers NZ to determine what employers believed were the types of skills required to be successful at work. They included: positive attitude; communication; teamwork; self-management; willingness to learn; problem-solving and decision-making; resilience.
In recruiting staff, employers looked for those employability skills alongside educational achievement, work experience and other core skills such as literacy, numeracy and a driver licence.
Ms Ardern said she wanted to see more schools offering vocational courses and working with pupils who showed a preference for those topics over traditional core subjects.
Other trades training policies announced by Labour were paying employers who took on an apprentice off a benefit the equivalent of the unemployment benefit for a year as a wage subsidy.
Mrs Nicholls said employers would be supportive of that approach, helping them make the commitment to a new apprentice, but ''we would like to see this extended beyond a person on a benefit, it is important to have the right person trained''.
Another Labour policy was introducing one KiwiBuild Visa to allow construction firms to bring in a skilled immigrant without the labour market test, if they took on an additional apprentice.
Mrs Nicholls said Labour's three years of free tertiary education for everyone was unsustainable
as ''this would effectively transfer education costs from the individual to the taxpayer.''
It might encourage some young people to attend tertiary institutions, who would otherwise not go, leading to a high failure rate.
The policy would distort the funding landscape as it might attract people away from trades and industry training, she said.
