Hon Hekia Parata

Minister of Education

12 November 2013

Speech to Annual ITO Qualifications Forum

Significant developments in technology, a global recession and the move to a global economy have meant that our students need to be highly skilled to gain access to better jobs, better incomes, and better life opportunities.

Knowledge, qualifications and skills are the key that opens the door to these opportunities.

Like many developed countries, our education system has well-established and well-understood pathways for progression to degrees and academic achievement.

While it is vital that we continue to excel in this area, the reality is that seven out of ten school leavers in New Zealand are not progressing to degree-level study, at least not immediately.

Successful young New Zealanders grow the potential of our country; disengaged, dislocated, disappointed young people don’t.

That’s why we are committed to raising educational achievement for five out of five of our kids.

This means encouraging those who are doing well to do even better, and lifting up those who are being left behind.

We do not have a generation to waste.

We must give young people choices that provide real and meaningful options for further education, training, or employment.

Vocational education and training

Our economy requires a workforce that functions at many levels.

The Government has set a target of 55% of all 25-34 year-olds acquiring a qualification at Level 4 or higher in 2017. At present only 52% have achieved this, which means we need to get another 18,000 or so across the line.

The Government has set a Better Public Services target of 85% of all 18 year-olds having achieved NCEA Level 2 or better in 2017.

Currently, 60.9% of Māori 18 year-olds and 68.1% of Pasifika 18 year-olds are achieving NCEA Level two. Overall we are at 77.2%.

While this is an improvement of 2.9 percentage points over the past two years, it is not enough.

I am looking at what further options we have to keep them engaged and gaining work-ready, foundation skills. This will allow them to more easily get on the ladder of possibilities that our vocational pathways offer.

Every young person must have the essential foundation of a coherent and useful NCEA Level 2 qualification or better - ideally by the time they leave school, but certainly by the time they turn 19.

A higher proportion of our young people need to be continuing to study, whether full-time with a tertiary provider or through an ITO whilst at work.

We all know that the transition from school to further study or employment is a very testing time for many young people. One of our biggest challenges is ensuring that our young people stay engaged.

We need to offer them a wider range of post-school destinations and the information to make good decisions around their future plans.

We need to work with schools and communities to identify and re-engage those learners either at risk of leaving education, or who have already left education.

Too much in the education sector focusses on what works for the adults, leaving those with the least power – the children and young people – to bear the burden of transitional change, adaptivity and navigation of the adult designed, adult driven system.

Young people should not have to fit the system; the system should meet them where they are at and support them on a path that will help them achieve their goals.

To support young people through this process, the Government wants to ensure that the system is responsive and adaptive to meet individuals’ learning needs.

To help providers deliver the kind of support that is needed to achieve this, the Government has introduced a number of measures.

Youth Guarantee and Fees Free places

The Government is committed to providing strong and robust Level 2 foundation qualifications to all students.

As many of you will be aware, the Youth Guarantee is now established as a series of programmes at the interface of secondary education, foundation-level tertiary education, and the transition to employment.

The central idea of Youth Guarantee is that young people need a coherent menu of options about how and where they learn, and to this end are provided with new and more relevant contexts for learning.

The flagship of Youth Guarantee was the introduction of fees-free tertiary education places for 16 and 17 year olds.

We also recently announced that the full-time Youth Guarantee scheme is being expanded to include 18 and 19 year-olds from 2014.

And, in certain circumstances, many more New Zealanders below the age of 25 will be able to access fees-free level 1 and 2 education courses and gain the skills they need to progress into higher level study and training.

This means that more students, who are not employed or engaged in education, will be able to access foundation level education at no cost.

Trades Academies provide another example of partnerships between secondary and tertiary providers.

Providers take a shared responsibility for delivering a programme of learning to a student that is relevant, motivating, and leads them to success in their chosen field.

Students who complete a course through a Trades Academy will have at least NCEA level 2 and a trades-related nationally transferable tertiary qualification at Level 1, 2 or 3.

The government has progressively improved foundation courses over the last four years by requiring all courses to include literacy and numeracy components, developing vocational pathways with qualifications relevant to industry, and focusing the system on the delivery of full qualifications through course completion.

However, one of the things we continue to hear is that schools and other providers need more flexibility in the way they are resourced, to be able to offer these innovative programmes.

That’s why I am happy to announce that from next year, we will also pilot a new model for secondary-tertiary partnerships, where students still enrolled in school can use Youth Guarantee places on a part-time basis.

This pilot is about further enabling different parts of the education sector to work together to provide relevant and purposeful education programmes, and deliver both general and technical skills that better prepare young people for their future careers.

I am keen to see this pilot support coherent programmes of learning, so it will be limited to programmes that are aligned with the Vocational Pathways.

Vocational Pathways

Vocational Pathways are another tool that can improve the experiences and outcomes for many thousands of young New Zealanders.

The pathways were developed to provide learners with a framework for achieving their NCEA Level 2.

They deliver a roadmap for current and future career planning and development for young people, showing them how their subject and course choices relate to further study, industry training or employment possibilities in the following sectors:

Manufacturing and Technology;

· Construction and Infrastructure;

· Primary Industries;

· Services Industries; and

· Social and Community Services.

When the five pathways were put together, we got a lot of feedback from educators that we needed to develop a sixth pathway for the creative sector. This will be launched in June 2014.

Vocational Pathways will support these young people, along with their families, teachers, and other influencers to be more informed about their learning choices - to avoid “dead-ends”, and understand the consequences of their decisions in terms of their future possibilities.

Achieving a Vocational Pathway means a young person has developed the skills and knowledge in areas that employers’ value.

This will enable young people to progress, using the Vocational Pathways to further education and training, building on what they have already achieved.

Vocational Pathways are a great new tool for the education system and they will truly reach their potential when employers take real ownership and use them as a translation device that allows them to have a better quality of engagement with their local schools and tertiary providers.

Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards

Our education system is top performing for most of our young people, and that is a credit to our teaching profession, and to the parents, families, and communities that support our schools.

But we need to keep up this momentum.

Last week I launched the Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards, which aim to recognise and celebrate excellence in teaching, leadership, community engagement and governance.

The Awards focus on early childhood education, primary and secondary schooling and collaboration amongst secondary schools, tertiary providers, and employers to create pathways for young people.

A further prize will be awarded each year focusing on a different part of the education system.

In 2014 the Education Focus Prize will be awarded to a group that has demonstrated collaboration between secondary schools, tertiary providers, and employers to meet young people’s needs.

I would encourage those of you here today to take the opportunity to apply or put forward nominations for this Prize.

Closing/Final comments

The collaboration that the Prize recognises is exactly what will ensure our young people get the best start to their careers and future learning.

Every student, no matter how successful in the education system, wants to continue on and make a successful transition to employment; and, as a country, we need them to do so.

We have a duty to ensure that our young people are given the opportunities and are armed with the skills they need to make that transition.

ends

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