About the reforms of vocational education

In August 2019, the Government announced its decision to reform vocational education. The aim was to create a unified vocational education system that responded to the needs of learners and employers.

The reforms also provided an opportunity for tertiary education institutions to provide a new level of accountability to Parliament and the public, including information that better reflected the sector’s underlying performance.

Further reforms were announced after a change of Government in 2023. 

The establishment of Te Pūkenga 

A key part of the vocational education reform was the establishment of Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology:

• On 1 April 2020, Te Pūkenga was established, bringing together the 16 institutes of technology and polytechnics (ITPs) as its Crown entity subsidiary companies. At the same time, the industry training organisations became Transitional Industry Training Organisations.
• In 2021, Te Pūkenga established an additional subsidiary focused on receiving the Transitional Industry Training Organisations (TITOs) before integrating into Te Pūkenga: Te Pūkenga – Work Based Learning Limited.
• Finally, by the end of December 2022, all of the Te Pūkenga Crown entity subsidiary companies had been disestablished and become business divisions of Te Pūkenga, and the functions related to organising training of nine of the Transitional Industry Training Organisations had also become part of Te Pūkenga.

We will continue to collate performance information to understand the effects of any further reform.

What the reforms aimed to achieve

The previous Government stated that a unified vocational education system needs to:

• take account of the unique needs of all learners, including those who have been traditionally underserved, such as Māori, Pasifika, and disabled learners;
• be relevant to employers' changing needs;
• be collaborative, innovative, and sustainable for all regions; and
• uphold and improve Māori–Crown partnerships.

Te Pūkenga was expected to develop the capability to support work-based, campus-based, and online learning as a unified system.

Te Pūkenga has a performance framework (including appropriate performance measures) to show how it is delivering vocational education that is unified, sustainable, and accessible throughout the country, including in the regions.

The Auditor-General has previously said that, for Te Pūkenga, Parliament, and the public to understand how well the reforms are progressing, the performance and accountability framework used by Te Pūkenga needs to be robust. It needs to be transparent about whether Te Pūkenga has met its performance targets and show how Te Pūkenga will improve its performance over time.

This also applies to any successor organisation that may be established.

The data we provide

We will continue to report on, and make available here, performance information from Te Pūkenga as reforms progress. Where appropriate, we will use the 16 ITPs’ performance information from before they were incorporated into Te Pūkenga as a baseline of performance.

Page updated: 6 June 2024