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Secondary school rolls continue to grow

The demographic baby boom passing from secondary schools into tertiary education will continue next year, according to data recently released from the Ministry of Education. The ministry's School Roll Summary Report: March 2010, shows that the number of year 12 students in secondary schools has grown by 22 percent over the last decade and the number of year 13 students by 37 percent.

For most school year-groups the change in student numbers between 2009 and 2010 is relatively small or static. However, the number of year 12 students grew by 2 percent between last year and this year, up to 57,000, while the number of year 13 students grew by 5 percent, to 47,000.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says that this information places pressure on the government to provide more places and funding for these students as they move on to post-secondary education.

The demographic growth in young people reaching school leaving age, alongside increased demand for tertiary education as a response to the global recession, clearly is placing significant pressure on tertiary education staff.

"The minister of education Mr Joyce has previously indicated that pressure on tertiary education rolls as a result of capped funding is a short term phenomenon" said Ms Riggs. "He may be right, but it looks, from these figures, as though increased numbers of students leaving schools could continue for another two years. In the meantime, some students will continue to miss out on the chance to learn while staff will continue to face heavier workloads resulting from more students and less funding."

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Teacher education to become post-graduate course?


2. Failing students identified prior to loans cuts


3. NMIT searching for flying gardeners and mussel farmers


4. Otago Polytechnic struggles against funding cuts


5. British govt plans 'degrees on the cheap'


6. Other news

Teacher education to become post-graduate course?

Education minister Anne Tolley has released a discussion document after receiving an independent report on how to attract, train, and retain high quality teachers.

The advisory group report, A Vision for the Teaching Profession, recommends significant changes for schools of education, including moving toward initial teacher education (ITE) being provided only at postgraduate level, so that entry into teaching is dependent on holding a postgraduate qualification, and ensuring that trainee teachers are accepted into ITE programmes only after being assessed for a "disposition to teach" through a formal selection process. It also wants to strengthen links between teacher education providers and schools by altering the structure of ITE and provisional registration.

"I appointed the Workforce Advisory Group to give me independent, expert advice on the future of the teaching workforce," says Mrs Tolley. "I now want to engage the wider education community on the Group's proposals."

Primary and early childhood teachers' union NZEI Te Riu Roa national president Frances Nelson has expressed concerns about the report’s recommendation that teachers must hold a postgraduate qualification to enter teaching. That would mean teacher trainees would complete a three year general degree and then go on to do one year post-graduate teacher training.

"NZEI supports a four year qualification for primary teachers but one year teacher training is not enough," said Ms Nelson. "What is needed is for the balance to change so that students would get at least two years of specific teacher training within that four year qualification. That would ensure there is a more solid teaching foundation."

Massey University College of Education's  Professor John O'Neill is also concerned, warning that education degrees could become obsolete. He told the Manawatu Standard a postgraduate course would attract the same calibre of students as undergraduate ones.

"They won't achieve their aim of increasing quality of candidates coming through and it limits [students'] options," he said. "We don't want to see the undergraduate route removed."

Failing students identified prior to loans cuts

Steven Joyce the minister for tertiary education has released information showing how many students are failing their tertiary education courses. This information is important because of the government's drive to restrict student loan funding to students who have failed to perform.

His data shows that nearly 10,000 part-time university students, or 19 percent, failed more than half of their courses in 2008. Nearly 30,000 part-time polytechnics students (28 percent), and nearly 5,000 part-time wānanga students (30 percent), failed over half their courses. Full-time students had slightly lower failure rates in 2008. Just under 11,000 full time university students (12 percent) failed more than half their courses, compared to 12,000 polytechnic students (26 percent), and 3,000 wānanga students (24 percent).

Mr Joyce says that the data does not represent the number of students affected by the student performance requirement for access to Government provided student loans. Because not all students choose to access student loans, student performance will be assessed when the student has completed 1.6 EFTS worth of study.

The government estimates that it will save $137.8 million over four years with its new policy to restrict loans to students who pass more than half their papers.

The fact that part-time students failed more consistently than their full-time peers could confirm one of the concerns that student representatives have raised: namely, that reducing student loan eligibility to students who fail papers could unduly affect part-time students.

A 2009 Ministry of Education report notes that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of part-time study in the OECD and suggested that, for some part-time students at least, gaining a qualification was not their intention. The report's author, David Scott, concludes that "qualification completion will continue to remain an important indicator of system performance in comparisons within and between countries. However, traditional measures of completion often don’t capture the full picture of success. This is particularly so in New Zealand because of the extent of those studying part-time and those changing track."

NMIT searching for flying gardeners and mussel farmers

The Marlborough Express reports that the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) is responding to government funding cuts by focusing on its niche courses.

Instead of providing a range of course to meet the varied demands of all students, the polytechnic will focus on its aviation, horticultural and aquacultural courses, and attracting secondary school leavers from outside the region.

Chief executive Tony Gray told the Express that communities seemed to expect polytechnics would service all types of courses at any cost, but reduced funding meant it was no longer viable.

"We can't do everything, but we're going to do a lot [of courses]," he said.

NMIT's funding was cut by $3 million last year and will continue to fall for the next three years after the National Government made changes to tertiary education funding. More funding cuts are possible with the introduction of student performance funding.

Mr Gray said the polytechnic would be measured on value for money and the Government had made plain that it would not bail out struggling polytechnics. He said the polytechnic was changing the culture of staff and how it went about its work to become more efficient in the face of reduced funding from the Government.

Otago Polytechnic struggles against funding cuts

Otago Polytechnic's recently released Annual Report gives a clear indication of how the government's funding cuts are affecting institutes of technology and polytechnics.  Despite taking an extra 2 percent equivalent full-time students last year than it did in 2008, Otago Polytechnic saw its government grants fall slightly over the same period. The result for staff has been a fall in the number of staff from 233 to 205 full-time equivalent staff (down 14 percent).  This lead an increase in the student-staff ratio from 14.7 students per staff member to 17 students per staff member (up 16 percent).

The polytechnic's chief executive Phil Ker said 2009 saw sweeping changes from the government, and most of those were bad news.

"Whilst we all understood the context – a government budget in crisis, in a world economy in severe recession – it was nevertheless a bitter blow that an already underfunded sector was to lose even more funding. For Otago Polytechnic the financial challenge placed before us was a staggering $5 million."

Otago Polytechnic showed improved productivity, with the total cost of each EFTS falling slightly from $14,930 to $14,821.

Mr Ker warned that, like all other polytechnics, there were likely to be more cuts yet to come with the next round of the government's scheduled funding cuts due to take effect in 2011.

"This will be our biggest challenge yet, given that there is still several million dollars to find from within an institution which has already been pared to the bone."

British govt plans 'degrees on the cheap'

A radical plan for cut-price degrees was outlined by the British government's universities’ secretary David Willetts as a means of solving tertiary education's economic woes.

Mr Willetts has outlined a scheme in which students could attend lectures at their local university while living at home, but sit exams to gain a degree from another, more prestigious, institution.

The move, however, was given a lukewarm reception by academics ,who said it risked creating a new "two-tier" system of those who could afford to go away to study at university and those who could not.

The speech had earlier been billed by the media as the first clear sign from the coalition government that student fees were set to rise, but Mr Willetts actually cautioned against relying on a fees hike to raise much-needed money for universities.

"If fees were to go up, the Government would have to lend people the money to pay for them and that would push up public spending," he said. "It's not just that students don't want to pay higher fees: the Treasury can't afford them."

He went on to outline a plan to separate teaching from learning – advocating that students could be taught in one institution near their home but study for an "external" degree at one of Britain's top universities.

"I do think it's possible to provide good-quality higher education in an institution that doesn't award its own degrees, and institutions may find it is cheaper and more efficient as well."

By Richard Garner at the Independent

Other news

Primary school teacher training in Hawke's Bay has been canned to save $400,000. The move leaves students part-way through their four-year courses without a class to go to unless they shift out of the region. Massey University said Government caps on the number of tertiary students it would fund left it no choice but to cut the course, which ran at a loss every year –The Dominion Post

Those planning to study at the University of Otago for fun next year will have to find a new hobby. As part of its attempts to limit roll growth, "interest-only" enrolments will no longer be accepted – Otago Daily Times

"There are lots of issues in tertiary education and I'm not sure National has really got a plan for that area, so I'm looking forward to taking (minister Steven Joyce) on" – the Labour Party's newly-promoted spokesperson on tertiary education, Grant Robertson.

With capped funding and high demand, NZQA's delegated power to set university entrance standards for those aged under 20 is becoming increasingly meaningless. Universities have to ration places even for those who meet NZQA's standard – Auckland, Otago, VUW and Massey have all put in place measures to limit access to university – Education Directions

The lions’ share of Uganda's new budget will go to the education sector. Finance Minister Syda Bbumba revealed yesterday as she unveiled the 2010/11 budget that the government will continue to focus on increasing and improving equitable access to quality education at all levels – Daily Monitor

There might have been a Wal-Mart University. As the world's largest retailer weighed its options for making a big splash in education, executives told one potential academic partner that Wal-Mart Stores was considering buying a university or starting its own. But "Wal-Mart U" never happened. Instead, the retailer chose a third option: a landmark alliance that will make a little-known for-profit institution, American Public University, the favored online-education provider to Wal-Mart's 1.4 million workers in the United States – The Chronicle

Australia's National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is taking international education company Navitas to the workplace relations tribunal. NTEU wants the company to release information on its plans to run a new private college at Newcastle University's Callaghan campus. Currently the details are marked commercial in confidence. The union is concerned that staff will lose their jobs under the college plan, and that Navitas will be sold the right to use staff's intellectual property for commercial gain - Radio 2SER-FM 107.3
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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

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