Following its recent election, new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has laid out the Coalition Government’s ambitious plan for its first three months on the job.
The next 100 days promise to bring about big change in New Zealand – none bigger than in polytechnic education.
The government’s to-do list includes everything from repealing the clean car discount scheme to decentralizing the health authority to requiring primary and intermediate schools to teach an hour of “reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic”, to banning cell phones in schools to the big item for post-secondary education – decentralizing the country’s polytechnic.
The polytechnic system has spent the last three years in a rocky transition, moving to a centralized system. And it seems the current government has decided it is better to return to the old system rather than forge ahead with the beleaguered new model.
Under the heading “deliver better public service” number 40 on the 49-item list is “begin disestablishing Te Pukenga.”
In 2019, the previous government announced that the government’s sixteen institutes of technology and polytechnics would merge to form the new organisation, effective April 2020. Te Pukenga also took over responsibility for industry training and apprenticeship training from most of the industry training organisations.
Located in Hamilton, Te Pukenga has over 13,000 staff, 240,000 students and assets worth NZ$2 billion. Government critics indicated that the government spent NZ$200 million on merging the polytechnics into Te Pukenga, and through that time, enrolments dropped 12 per cent, and a more than $100 million deficit was accrued.
On July 28, 2023, former Otago Polytechnic Chief Executive Phil Ker described the merger delays and financial costs of combining the polytechnics into a single entity as a “national disgrace.” Eight of sixteen chief executives were reported as having resigned by mid-April 2021. As well, several members of Te Pukenga’s executive team resigned over the past year, including the CEO, and according to The Post, the Chief Digital Officer just five days ago.
Timelines and further details of the disestablishment have not yet been announced, though some in the system have indicated they expect fewer than the original 16 polytechnics in the future and instead more of a regional system. They also expect the new institutes to have an element of shared services to reduce overall system costs.
Feroz Ali, Executive Chairman of Whitecliffe Education in New Zealand, believes the shockwave from this announcement could have been prevented if they had learned from Australia.
“If New Zealand had learned from TAFE rollups in Australia, they wouldn’t have gone this route,” said Ali, who is also involved with private education entities in Australia and Canada. “We hope that the new government will address what the regional requirements are for these polytechnics and perhaps revisit the current composition in those needs.”
The 100-day plan can be found here.
