Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — New Zealand Qualifications Authority

I am very pleased to take a call on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. Can I start by acknowledging the wonderful Ministers who are responsible for education, Minister Hekia Parata and Minister Joyce. They are doing an outstanding job, so I am very pleased to be chair of the Education and Science Committee.

Can I just say there are three core goals for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority in the future. The first one is to ensure that we have a clearer system and that we promote recognition of learner achievement, the second is to ensure that we have increased confidence in the system, and the third is to ensure that for our young people we have more portable qualifications across the world.

Can I start by saying that we have to talk about the base that we started from, because we actually cannot talk about the future for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority unless we acknowledge the very difficult situation that we inherited. We had 16 and 17-year-olds dropping out of school with fewer qualifications and lower literacy. The number of degree-level graduates did not improve between 2000 and 2008, despite huge funding increases. We had low completion rates for courses, we had no incentives for tertiary institutions to improve their performance, and we had a bloated qualifications register.

One of the core jobs of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority in the future is about reducing this number of qualifications. In 2008 there were 6,000 qualifications in New Zealand. For a country with a working-age population of 2.2 million people, that is appalling. Under our Government there is a review. Our goal is to ensure that by 2014 the number of qualifications is down to 1,200. To give you an example, in the area of hairdressing, for instance, there were 72 qualifications. We will be getting that down to nine.

We spend $4.3 billion in tertiary education each year. If we are going to achieve the kinds of results through the New Zealand Qualifications Authority that we need to achieve, we need to do a whole lot of other things. One of those other things is improving the financial performance of universities. There are 12,000 more core tertiary places funded under our Government. We are investing more in engineering, science, and research-led learning. We have a target of 55 percent of 25 to 34-year-olds with a qualification of level 4 or above.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Another target! Another one! Have you told John about this one?

The Opposition says: “Another target!”, but what we know is that we are working from an appalling record under the last Labour Government, and, secondly, we also—and this was mentioned by the Minister of Education—have some very disadvantaged people in our country. We have, unfortunately, some very difficult issues around Māori and Pacific Island education. What we are interested in is actually having accountability, and that is what targets are about. That is why we have them. We are able to focus Crown entities and other entities such as the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and actually say: “We want accountability; we want some targets.” This is not about pouring more money into the system; this is about ensuring there is clarity and there is a simpler system for New Zealanders to be able to go out across the world with decent qualifications. That is what this entity is now tasked with, unlike under the last Labour Government, where there were low completion rates and where we had 16 and 17-year-olds dropping out.

It is also about ensuring that we know, through schemes like the Youth Guarantee, that some people do not suit classrooms. For those people we are investing more than $100 million in the Youth Guarantee scheme. Can I say that we are only able to do this with the support of Ministers like Hekia Parata and the Hon Steven Joyce, who have fought very hard in the education budget to increase our education budget every single year—by $512 million over the next 4 years—and that is because of the Hon Hekia Parata. It is a tribute to this Government that we are investing more than ever before in the education portfolio.

What we can also see is that we need to have more confidence in our private training establishments. That is why, over 4 years, there is $29.5 million to reward completion and innovation. But it is also about acknowledging that we are pouring more than many other countries into our student loan and allowances system, and that is way out of step with many other nations. I think 41 percent or 42 percent of our total tertiary budget is spent on student support. You compare that with Australia at 31 percent. If we want to get the kinds of outcomes we want for young New Zealanders in the future we have to shift funds into things like research and into things like training, not just into student support, and that has been a big focus for this Government.

Again, it is about incentives in the system. So if we look at what—

Report noted.

Children’s Commissioner

Report noted.

Families Commission