As Christmas looms this year little has changed, although thanks to Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds’ announcement late last week the thousands affected by this decision at least now know for certain that by Christmas next year Te Pūkenga will be a thing of the past.
While the announcement continues a pattern in recent decisions by the government of announcing a decision to delay taking immediate action, in this case the pause seems justified.
Although National’s Invercargill MP was a polytechnic CEO before coming to Parliament, Ms Simmonds is familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the old system, not the new.
There was some rationale for Labour’s decision to merge polytechnics, and what is good about the new system should not be discarded. There were inefficiencies and duplications — particularly in procurement and administration — where savings for the taxpayer could be made.
But what doomsayers, such as Ms Simmonds, prophesied, has largely come to pass. Efficient and well-run organisations such as her old stamping ground the Southland Institute of Technology, and Otago Polytechnic, have ended up subsidising poor performers and been drained of resources and talent in the process.
Courses are now being cut, mainly to meet budgetary dictates, depriving learners of opportunities and industry of skilled, qualified trainees.
But her decision to take a steady approach and give institutions a year to prepare for the transition to becoming either an autonomous entity or part of an urban or regional federation of polytechnics is prudent. This is a sector which has endured enormous turmoil and it will take time to tear asunder what was brought together.
Ms Simmonds expects 10 polytechnics could return to being standalone from January 1, 2026; the others, likely the multiple institutions operating in Auckland and Wellington, seem the most likely to be considering the federation route.
However, her catchcry is that whatever option institutions take, is that they must be "financially sustainable". This is not an impossibility, as SIT and Otago have proven in the past, but the government will need to provide appropriate funding both to assist in the transition and to ensure new standalone entities can indeed find their feet.
The sector was struggling before Labour’s intervention, and it has largely remained in the doldrums since those changes were implemented. The malaise which it finds itself in will take time to clear.
The sector does have one advantage; the government, thanks both to its large backbench of provincial electorate MPs and New Zealand First’s long-standing passion for regional development, will face pressure from within, let alone from without, to get this right.
More broadly, as the sobering economic statistics released last week showed, New Zealand’s economy remains stagnant. Finance Minister Nicola Willis is banking on economic growth as the panacea to the country’s ills, and a vibrant vocational education sector turning out trainees to work in burgeoning local small and medium businesses is crucial to that hope becoming a reality.
Vital to that will be how the newly autonomous polytechnics interact with the future employers of their graduates.
Much of Ms Simmonds’ consultation in the past 12 month has been about considering how this system will work. Work it must, both for employers and learners: the credibility of hard-earned credentials must be robust, and employers need to trust a graduate has certain skills on day one.
Keeping disruption at a minimum will be challenging, but after the chaos and uncertainty of the past three years all connected with vocational education deserve some surety that stability is on its way.
