For all Education Reporters
Polytechnic Staff Welcome Funding for Skills Strategy
The Association of Staff in Tertiary Education President Tangi Tipene said today that additional funding in the Budget
to support the unified skills strategy, with an emphasis on building literacy and numeracy capability, was long overdue.
“A national focus on the needs of the country in terms of a skills strategy will go a long way to addressing some of the
skill shortage issues this country is facing”, she said. “Putting funding into the ITP sector in particular makes sense
as far as government investment is concerned. The ITP sector is perfectly placed to provide the education necessary for
New Zealand to become the high income, knowledge based economy that the government and all New Zealanders are committed
to”.
Ms Tipene went on to say that while ASTE welcomed a number of the announcements in the Budget the union was still
seriously concerned about the continuing underfunding of the sector which was leading to a number of unnecessary
redundancies of valuable staff members in the sector.
ENDS