Hon Steve Maharey
Minister of Social Services and Employment
Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education)
Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector
MP for Palmerston North

02 February 2000

NZQA’s years of indecision over

The new Government is clear about the future role it envisages for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), the Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education), Steve Maharey, said today when releasing its post-election briefing papers.

Mr Maharey said the Government would work closely with the Authority to ensure it was able to carry out its responsibilities. NZQA has existed in a policy vacuum for several years. Successive former Ministers went through elaborate consultation exercises on the future role of the Authority but then failed to implement any changes.

“This Government sees NZQA as the sole guardian of the national qualifications framework and the registration body which enables tertiary providers to gain access to public funding. We do not intend to establish the Quality Assurance Agency of New Zealand (QAANZ), mooted in the 1998 tertiary white paper, because we do not believe a separate agency is necessary or helpful when developing a seamless national system of qualifications.

“The Government wants to build a quality culture in the tertiary sector where we as co-funders, the institutions as providers, and learners are all involved in a drive to achieve excellence. We see NZQA as having the key role to play as the guardian of the national qualifications framework.

“The last Labour Government established NZQA because it was committed to fostering the culture of lifelong learning which is so important in toady’s knowledge society. National allowed the Authority to become distracted by a focus on process and more recently it proposed that competition should be introduced into qualification validation”, Steve Maharey said.

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