VET in Aotearoa

Since the RoVE process started in February 2019 (Chan & Huntingdon, 2022; read more here), Aotearoa has seen a LOT of disruption in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, including starting to form a single mega-polytechnic, and then deciding not to following a change of government (TEC, 2025).

Part of what has been disrupted is in the area of work-based learning, or WBL: "learning that takes place at work, through work, for the purpose of work. It comprises varying proportions of on and off-job learning developed via a tripartite employer-learner-provider partnership” (Kingsford, 2020, p. 5). WBL in New Zealand is designed for "industries [to] have more influence over how they train apprentices and trainees" (Simmonds, 2025). During this turbulent time of VET change, world-wide right-wing shifts, and a global pandemic, Aotearoa is seeing a decrease in WBL participants at present (Education Counts, 2025). And if the numbers are falling, that is not good news for the VET sector, because there is a significant skills shortage (Kingsford, 2020) which is unlikely to be improved by the continuing sector upheaval.

The current government is proposing a new model, aiming to give industry more control of the VET process, by creating six moving parts (TEC, 2025): 

1. industry-led Industry Skills Boards, or ISBs, responsible for setting training standards (this is the industry bit)
2. delivered by a "network of work-based learning provision" made up of polytechnics, private training providers and wānanga. This is the educator bit
3. Funded by central government. The dollar bit
4. Administered by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). Not really sure why this bit exists. Perhaps because TEC are supposed to co-ordinate all the moving parts
5. With programme standards, programme delivery and quality audited by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA). The measurement bit
6. All participants - ISBs, ITPs, PTEs, Wānanga, TEC, NZQA - will need to meet as yet unspecified WBL requirements.

No, that is not complicated AT ALL. Sure, I bet it will work JUST FINE. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

This ISB model has not even begun, yet some industry players are already saying this won't provide enough control (Gerritsen, 2025), while others are flagging that - while this may possibly create a more "competitive market-based environment" (Maurice-Takerei, 2016, p. 33) - it is also likely to mean low quality WBL programme delivery (Chan & Huntington, 2022). That is not only going to provide NZQA and educators with a problem; it is also going to provide industry with a problem of poorly trained tradespeople and technicians... and even more of a shortage of good quality workers in an increasingly tight market. 

This is back to the future: twenty five years ago, Murray noted, "When training was opened to market forces, and organised on a voluntaristic, user-pays basis, training often stopped altogether, or became fragmentary and exclusive, and of variable quality" (2001, p. 243). Ow.

I wonder how much more taxpayer funding will be wasted in taking yet another half-arsed bite at reforming VET. I guess we just wait and watch <sigh>.

Sam

References:

Chan, S., & Huntington, N. (2022). Reshaping Vocational Education and Training in Aotearoa New Zealand. Springer International Publishing AG.

Education Counts. (2025). New Zealand's workplace-based learners. Ministry of Education. https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/new-zealands-workplace-based-learners

Gerritsen, J. (2025, July 10). Apprenticeships and training changes ‘fundamentally flawed”, industry groups warn. Radio New Zealand/RNZ. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/566528/apprenticeship-and-training-changes-fundamentally-flawed-industry-groups-warn from RNZ

Simmonds, P. (2025, April 25). A better path for apprentices and trainees [press release]. The Beehive. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/better-path-apprentices-and-trainees

Kingsford, F. with Grace, J., & Fenton, P. (2020). Mobilising the new world: Report of the work-based learning (WBL) workstream [report]. NZIST Workplace-based Learning Working Group/Te Pūkenga. https://www.xn--tepkenga-szb.ac.nz/assets/Reports/5.-Work-Based-Learning-Interim-Report-February-2020-2.pdf

Maurice-Takerei, L. (2016). A Whakapapa of Technical, Trade and Vocational Education in Aotearoa, New Zealand: Origins of a Hybrid VET System [Monograph Series 1]. Unitec. https://www.unitec.ac.nz/epress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Final_A-Whakapapa-of-Technical-Trade-and-Vocational-Education-in-Aotearoa-New-Zealand-Origins-of-a-Hybrid-VET-System_by-Lisa-Maurice-Takerei.pdf

Murray, N. (2001). A history of apprenticeship in New Zealand [Doctoral dissertation, Lincoln University]. https://hdl.handle.net/10182/1599

TEC. (2025, July 3). Work-based learning provision. Tertiary Education Commission. https://www.tec.govt.nz/strategic-initiatives/strategic-initiatives/vocational-education-system/changes-to-the-vocational-education-and-training-vet-system/new-work-based-learning-model/work-based-learning-provision