Engagement and consultation

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Reform of Vocational Education

What’s happened so far – the engagement process

Throughout 2018, the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) engaged with vocational education and training sector stakeholders, including learners (students, industry trainees and apprentices), employers, iwi, business, industry groups, local government, education and training providers and their staff, and a variety of peak bodies.

As a result of this engagement, this Government made three main proposals for change:

New roles for providers and industry bodies
A New Zealand Institute of Skills & Technology serving all of New Zealand
A unified funding system

On 13 February 2019, the Minister of Education Chris Hipkins presented the three proposals to the vocational education and training sector and launched a seven-week consultation. The consultation was open for everyone to provide feedback on.

We received 2,904 submissions, and met with more than 5,000 people in approximately 190 events, meetings and forums, listening to your feedback and thoughts on the proposals and getting a clearer picture of what you hold dear in relation to the vocational education system.

Thirty-five meetings and events were held specifically for staff and management at the 11 industry training organisations, while 99 meetings and events were organised with the 16 institutes of technology and polytechnics.

Engagement in numbers

This infographic provides key engagement facts for the consultation period

The consultation documents describe the proposed changes.

What next?

The Government has announced its final decisions on the reform proposals, but engagement with industry, education providers and the community and whānau and others affected will continue throughout the design process. The input of those who work within the sector is vital to ensuring we get this right and the system we end up with does what we have set out to achieve.

There will be a wide variety of activities, including:

working on setting up the new Institute; an Establishment Unit, with a Chair and Council designate, is to start planning for the transition to the Institute by 1 September 2019
ensuring the transfer of on-the-job training to providers is carefully managed occurs progressively from 2020 as confidence is gained that sufficient capability is in place in providers to ensure successful transfer of on-the-job training; the use of mechanisms such as creating holding organisations from existing ITOs will be considered to continue current on-the-job training arrangements, with the goal of moving all training to providers by 2022
working with industry to set up workforce development councils after 1 April 2020, when legislative changes are enacted, with the aim of completing the establishment by June 2021.

Keeping you informed

If you’d like to keep up to date on the Reform of Vocational Education, you can subscribe to the Tertiary Education Commission email newsletters on their website:

Government announces new vision for vocational education - TEC website