Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds says a reduction of 600 roles across different polytechnics is necessary to address unsustainable financial deficits as the Government dismantles Te Pūkenga.
Ten polytechnics will be re-established from next year 2026, Simmonds announced last week, with differing fates for six other institutions.
Simmonds told Q+A the net job losses were necessary to address unsustainable deficits.
“It depends where they’re coming from. When you’ve got institutions that are running $11.3 million deficits, you simply cannot carry on with that,” she said.
“You look at what’s causing those deficits. In the WelTec/Whitireia situation, the arts centre here in the middle of Wellington, they were running at a ratio of one staff member to 5.6 students. No school gets that advantage.
“You’ve got to have a look at where the staff are going to come from, and in some cases, it’s just they shouldn’t be operating at that ratio.”
She confirmed “there would be a reduction this year” of roles at some institutions.
“There will be further redundancies.”
Minister confident changes will prove worth
Treasury has previously suggested the reforms could risk repeating past failures, saying plans remained focused on supporting institutions’ financial viability, “with no clear evidence of how the needs of learners and employers have been considered”.
Simmonds responded when read the advice: “Treasury gave a range of advice, which Cabinet looked at along with lots of other advice.
“We’ve got evidence over the last five decades of polytechnics being able to be successful to reflect the needs of industries and their community, and so I relied on the history that we’d seen of polytechnics being able to do that successfully.”
Before entering politics, the Vocational Education Minister and National MP served as the chief executive of the Southern Institute of Technology.
Treasury officials also posited the reforms could create a financial situation “similar, if not worse, than the situation faced by [educational institutions] pre-Te Pūkenga”.
Asked about assurances that further bailouts wouldn’t be needed, she said the institutions “will be set up in the best possible way that they can be”.
“They will have their debt addressed. They will have their financial pathway to viability. It’s then up to communities to make sure that the right people are in the governance roles and the right people are in the management roles, and that they integrate with the community.”
Simmonds was also pressed about whether some institutions gaining independence were in worse financial positions than those entering federation.
“No, not a worse financial position, no. So, some of them will get to sustainability. They’ll get to a surplus. In the time they’ll take to get to a surplus, they have reserves that can cover them during that time.”
Labour says new model will drain regions
In response to the Q+A interview, Labour’s education spokesperson Shanan Halbert said, the whole point of Te Pūkenga was to make the polytechnic sector more financially viable and ensure more training opportunities and employment in our regions.
“The changes announced today will only return the polytechnic sector to a model that was never financially viable – and the result will be major job losses in local areas.”
Halbert said the Government “could have simply addressed some of the issues” the existing model to avoid the “uncertainty this has had on staff and students”.
The changes to amalgamate polytechnics and institutes of technology were introduced by the previous Labour government.
In her interview, Simmonds was also asked about delays to a ban on single-use plastics, how she had managed her environment portfolio, and on Gore’s recent tap water issues.
For the full interview, watch the video above
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
