Penny Simmonds said there were three or four ministerial appointments for each council and they took effect immediately. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds has announced her appointees to the governing councils of the first 10 polytechnics to leave super-institute Te Pūkenga and return to stand-alone status.
The institutes being removed from Te Pūkenga include two that were formerly separate organisations - MIT and Unitec in Auckland.
Simmonds said there were three or four ministerial appointments for each council and they took effect immediately.
She also appeared before the Education and Workforce Select Committee on Tuesday.
Course cuts, aimed at ensuring the stand-alone polytechnics were viable, would not reduce the training opportunities available in regional centres, she said.
"The courses that have been closed by the polytechnics are not full of people. Polytechs don't close courses that have 18 or 20 or even 16 people in them. They close courses that aren't viable because they've got very small numbers in them," she said.
Regional institutes would have a greater variety of courses available through the Open Polytechnic, she said.
Committee member Labour MP Shanan Halbert asked Simmonds what the government was doing for the 90,000 young people not in employment or training (NEET).
Apprenticeship numbers dropped by thousands after a subsidy for employers introduced by the previous government, the Apprenticeship Boost, ended, he said.
Simmonds defended the government's decision.
Apprenticeship Boost was a post-covid policy that expired at the end of 2024 she said.
Labour MP Shanan Halbert asked Simmonds what the government was doing for the 90,000 young people not in employment or training. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
The government continued some but not all of the funding and the main reason for the drop in apprentices was the poor performance of the economy, she said.
"As the economy comes out of that recession, we will see employment pick up and we'll see apprenticeships pick up."
Earlier, Tertiary Education Commission chief executive Tim Fowler told the committee post-covid subsidies encouraged a massive increase in work-based training and apprenticeships which dropped sharply when those subsidies were removed.
"As soon as those came off, they dropped, and we saw some pretty poor outcomes I think for learners and apprentices as a consequence because employers dropped apprentices when the subsidy got ditched," he said.
However, despite the slump in numbers there were now more apprentices than in 2019, he said.
Fowler said some polytechnics became less relevant to their local regions and their enrolments declined as a result.
He said the newly-established polytechnics would have a good chance of succeeding if they responded to local skill needs.
"I think there is going to be a test for all of those new institutions to ensure they are nimble," he said.
"I think it's less about systems and more about, frankly, attitude of the governance of those new institutions and especially the senior leadership to create the environment that says, for staff, 'we are here for the local employers in our region and therefore we need to be really close to them'."
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