PEP Talk

Education Key Points

1. TEC to be established and will include Skill NZ and the MoE’s Tertiary Resourcing Division.

2. EFTS funding continues.

3. Youth Training funding up, TOP same.

4. Adult literacy up.

5. Plus lots of non-Budget news

Decisions on TEAC Proposals

The Government will establish the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). A transition TEC will be set up by the end of July. Other decisions are:

- profiles and charters will be used;

- functional classifications have not yet been accepted; and

- TEC will cover all tertiary education (including adult education), and include Skill New Zealand and the MoE’s Tertiary Resourcing Division.

Legislation will be introduced towards the end of this year.

Enabling Education UP!

PTEs have been waiting for it for years and funding for Youth Training has finally gone up. The increase is about $3.75m per calendar year from 2002 - about a 3-5% increase. This will fund additional places. There is a strong emphasis on EDUCATION in the Budget papers.

Adult literacy is up too with a range of pilots being initiated. The ideas in the recently released Adult Literacy Strategy will receive funding of $18m over four years - $3m the first year and $5m thereafter. This will include quality standards, professional development, better resources and, of course, extra places for students.

Training Opportunities has no extra funding, but there are new initiatives to help people move into work, including:

- promotion of existing initiatives to job seekers;

- an increase of the Work Start grant from $250-$500 maximum per year; and

- other initiatives within the “Making Work Pay” package.

Another 4000 places will be funded for low-income people and beneficiaries for free career guidance. This is on top of the existing 1000 places. The CareerPoint 0800 line will continue.

There will also be pilot Tertiary Education Learning and Assessment Centres designed for people at risk of educational failure. They will be established in two communities at a cost of $0.5m per year. They will provide face to face advice about available opportunities and learning support. They will target people exiting TOP/YT or school-based community education as well as those seeking to enter tertiary education.

Finally, there will be a pilot of full service schools in the AIMHI group of secondary schools, worth about $0.6m per year.

EFTS Same, Plus Fee Freeze Offer

PTEs are being offered the fee stabilisation offer, along with TEIs. This amounts to 5.1% over 2000 funding rates - if you want to raise your fees in 2002, after freezing them in 2001, you will just get the 2000 base rate. It is unclear whether you can access it if you upped fees in 2001.

All growth in EFTS will also be funded - it will be a demand led system for one more year.

Other initiatives in this area are:

- four new tertiary teaching awards, worth $50,000 each, for outstanding teachers;

- funding for the office of the ombudsman to establish an ombudsman position for tertiary education complaints; and

- training programmes on the governance of TEIs and extra attention to high-risk TEIs.

Research

Centres of excellence have been approved, primarily as inter-institutional research networks. Any TEI can be the host but any other organisation can take part. Only TEIs that stabilise fees can be a host organisation. The funding will be $3m next year, and $11m the year after.

The Marsden fund for blue-sky research is up $2m, while the New Economy Research Fund is up $2.3m

Industry Training

Industry training gets an extra $16m per year. This will cover an estimated 17,400 additional places over four years. Industry training is in the same position as PTEs used to be, with a capped fund, and this increase is welcome. PTEs provide a great deal of ITO off-job training, and new opportunities may arise from this funding. Some money will be put towards technology based learning initiatives.

There will be a stronger focus on Maori in the Modern Apprenticeship Programme.

Other Education Budget Items

A Jobs for Students initiative will help find jobs for students over the summer holidays.

Government will spend money on developing an e-learning strategy -$0.1 to $0.25m over the next few years.

Export Education Funding

Steve Maharey announced export education initiatives on 16 May. Full details will be released in late June. The funding of new initiatives amounts to $1.3 million in 2001/02.

$667,000 on institutional and professional development initiatives, which include:

- assisting boards of trustees, councils and other governing bodies on issues of policy and institutional strategy relating to participation in international student education;

- programme management training opportunities, resource materials and advice for principals and programme directors; and

- development opportunities for staff across the sector - in areas which could be as varied as cross-cultural communication, ESOL, managing inquiry systems, application of the curriculum for international students, enhancement of understanding of other education systems and of alternative teaching and learning styles.

$228,000 will go towards quality monitoring and improvement, including underpinning research and evaluation. The pastoral care code development costs are covered by existing funds. The new money will go to initiatives including:

- ESOL guidelines and standards development for institutions;

- student home-stay provision/ quality improvement research;

- quality indicators development;

- monitoring and reporting of international student achievement and subject choice;

- monitoring and reporting of international student satisfaction;

- measures to encourage international education research; and

- the review and promotion of internationalisation of programmes and systems in education institutions.

$210,000 will be used for initiatives to promote recognition offshore through information generation and dissemination and through greater dialogue with ministries and authorities offshore. These include:

- producing information for dissemination overseas on the NZ education and qualifications systems;

- seeking to extend arrangements for resolving recognition and quality assurance issues offshore;

- supporting linkage and relationship building to promote understanding and recognition of our system and to underpin marketing efforts; and

- mechanisms to generate international education information and resource materials and disseminate them within New Zealand

Strategy management and development initiatives will be given $195,000. This will cover:

- mechanisms for ongoing intra-government sector co-ordination;

- improved liaison by government with education providers on international student policies and issues;

- further policy and guidelines development in areas affecting the development of the industry; and

- on-going strategy development and management.

The funding will only be provided for a short time, and the industry will need to stump up with the cash from 2002 onward.

Enabling Education Position Paper

The Executive is currently reviewing a draft of NZAPEP’s enabling education position paper. This will also be distributed to our memorandum of understanding partners for comment. Then it will be released for comment from members and any other interested parties for a month or so. This should be within a week or ten days.

PTE Name Survey

NZAPEP has conducted a survey of all PTEs on which name PTEs prefer. Final results are not yet in, but initial indications are that about two thirds of PTEs prefer the term “independent tertiary education provider’

So far about 280 PTEs have responded to this survey, some of them suggesting other names that were not on the survey form. Since we tend to get stuck with names for a long time - 11 years for “PTE’ - the Executive will canvass all names and proposals before going forward with a firm recommendation to the Government.

Conference

NZAPEP’s annual conference will be on September 17, 18 and 19. The conference will start on the evening of Monday the 17th with cocktails and the formal sessions will be on the 18th and 19th. The conference will again be in Wellington, this time at the Park Royal hotel.

Moderation best practice

A one day moderation workshop has been planned to discuss the final version of the Best Practice Moderation document. It will be run once in Wellington and once in Christchurch. The dates are:

- 30 May 2001, Wellington; and

- 6 June 2001, Christchurch.

The workshops are designed for participants who have been involved in a unit standard moderation system. Participants should have experience with at least one of the following activities:

- regional or national moderation meetings;

- moderation by mail, cluster moderation meetings or moderator visits;

- being a moderator; or

- being responsible for internal or external moderation systems within a provider or standard setting body.

Lunch will be provided at the workshop. There is no workshop fee for participants. NZQA and Skill NZ are funding the workshops. Workshop participants are responsible for their own travel costs and arrangements.

Contact Dave Guerin at fax 04 801 6412 or dave@ed.co.nz to register. There are six places left at each workshop.

Student fee protection

Members will have received a letter from NZQA outlining the latest details on student fee protection. The preferred option for most students will probably be a trust account now.

Education Directions has collected some data on trust accounts in co-operation with NZAPEP. This will be up on their web site on Tuesday 29 May and provides guidance on how to operate a trust account. It can be found at:

www.ed.co.nz\ptes.htm

Insurance does not look like a viable option at this stage. One company is interested in developing a product but will not be able to do it for a couple of months due to other commitments. They may be able to offer a product for next year.

NZAPEP has sent a letter to the Chairperson of the NZQA Board asking for a response on various policy issues and consultation processes.

International Corner

Education NZ will be holding its annual conference 6 - 8 August 2001. It will provide a good opportunity for members to assess opportunities in international education - now New Zealand's eighth largest export industry.

If you are thinking about international markets, you should seriously consider this event. They are running a workshop stream in the conference for companies new to international export or thinking about starting. More information can be found by logging onto:

http://www.educationnz.org.nz/industry/Pg2.htm

Education NZ released its brand for marketing NZ as an education destination at the recent NZ Tourism Trade Show - "The New World Class Educated in New Zealand". Meetings around the country are being scheduled. Dates and venues have not

been confirmed as yet, but check directly with ENZT if you are interested in attending.

National Party Ideas

Some people said that they found it hard to find the National Party’s thought piece on tertiary education policy that was mentioned in the last issue. If you are interested type in the following address:

http://www.national.org.nz/press/April%202001/policy%20taskforce.htm

TOP/YT Review

A meeting was held last week to discuss the draft terms of reference for the review of Training Opportunities and Youth Training. About 15 people from PTEs, polytechnics and ITOs attended the meeting to offer suggestions to officials working on the issues. The terms of reference will be finalised by the Minister shortly.

Some of the key points emphasised by NZAPEP were that:

- consultation should occur around the country, not at national meetings in Wellington;

- the review should include the money diverted to WINZ several years ago, to see whether that should be returned;

- the programmes should be seen as education interventions, not just employment interventions;

- that we need to measure the personal and social development of trainees, not just employment and educational outcomes;

- that the review should include a mix of officials and people from the sector; and

- the contract management process should be reviewed completely.

A Very Capital Campaign

The public sector has made very strong attacks on PTEs over the last ten days. As soon as they leaked the Minister’s fee stabilisation offer provided in confidence they realised that it would not be enough to meet their needs.

They then decided that if PTEs did not receive the “capital component’ of EFTS funding, that would free up about $15m and help them balance their books. With a flush of enthusiasm they rushed to the media and have been there ever since.

NZAPEP would like to make a few points clear to members:

- we will not be responding to the TEI sector in kind by pointing out any of their weaknesses - this is not a slanging match;

- we will be strongly defending the choices of students to enrol in our sector, and the subsidies to which they are entitled;

- the EFTS funding system does not have a “capital component” and only did so for a very short time;

- the EFTS system allows providers to make their own choices about whether they lease or purchase capital, which has roughly the same cost; and

- if the EFTS system provided for capital needs, why would the wananga have made a successful case to the Waitangi Tribunal for a capital establishment grant?

PTEs all have to supply capital to start up their organisations and to grow them. They need to supply working capital according to the size of the organisation. They also need to purchase premises and equipment, or provide security on long-term leases, such as personal guarantees. No TEI manager signs a personal guarantee for their polytechnic or university.

The main loser out of any such change to PTE funding would be the more than 20,000 students who would face higher fees. They can count their lucky stars that the TEI sector left it too late to influence the Budget.

This latest campaign is cynical and opportunistic - it’s a very Capital campaign indeed.

ERA

Last month we put in details of organisations that could offer advice on employment relations issues, but we missed the full details for one organisation.

Guy Associates is a People Management and Training Consultancy specialising in advocacy and training in legally defensible policies and procedures in all areas related to employer/employee relations. Contact Rosita Guy a t03-355-8037 (tel).

NZAPEP’s Revenue Collection

NZAPEP’s revenue collection started last week, with membership renewal packs being distributed to our 150 members from last year. We look forward to your early renewal so that we can reach our target of 180 members by the end of the year. With eight new members already, we should reach that target easily.

Executive

The next Executive meeting will be on June 14. On the agenda will be the restructuring, TEAC, the Budget, the TOP/YT review. Andy West, NZQA CEO, will also attend.

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