A Realistic Budget for Real Skills

20 May 2009: A Realistic Budget for Real Skills

In times of economic recession, investing in industry training becomes even more crucial, Industry Training Federation Executive Director Jeremy Baker said today.

While next week’s Budget was expected to be tight, he was hopeful that the government would still see the benefit of investing in industry training.

“Industry training is the most cost effective part of the education and training sector. Added to that, it is closely aligned with industries, who also make financial and in-kind contributions, so it is more likely to lead to direct economic gain through productivity improvement. The National government has stated its support for industry training, including at the Prime Minister’s Job Summit earlier this year. We will be looking for how it plans to turn its stated support into practical reality.”

Mr Baker said his wish list for the Budget included:

- More flexibility for ITOs to use their existing core funding to work closely with industry and workplaces on productivity improvement not necessarily tied to individual trainees.

- Support to help keep trainees in work where they are in danger of being laid off due to economic recession

- Support for Industry Training Organisations (ITOs) for work with schools. They are currently not funded for this but there is increasing demand for this work and high government expectations for delivery of policy initiatives like the youth guarantee.

- Maintaining the funding allocated for improving workplace literacy and learning. This is a critical area where great progress is being made and it would be damaging for this work to be hindered.

“These are not high cost items, but they are initiatives that will help secure a skilled and productive workforce now and in the future,” Mr Baker said.

More than 35,000 businesses and 180,000 apprentices and trainees are involved in
industry training every year. The Industry Training Federation is a voluntary membership organisation representing all of New Zealand’s 39 Industry Training Organisations.

ENDS

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