Te Mahi Ako Building Upon Skills Active Aotearoa’s Success

Despite a disruptive year, Skills Active Aotearoa achieved some good results in its 2022 educational performance indicators released today, with its subsidiary Te Mahi Ako now continuing that great work with a focus on improving learner outcomes and retention of apprentices.

“We’re proud to have supported more than 5,500 ākonga and 400 assessors last year, while providing over 90 programme variations in te ahumahi ā-rēhia – the active recreation, leisure, entertainment and events sectors,” says Skills Active chief executive and Te Mahi Ako acting chief executive, Maren Frerichs.

“Particularly pleasing is our cohort-based programme completion rate, with Skills Active coming out with the second highest rate for the industry training sectors at 71% against an average of 66%. To break that down, a higher than-average completion rate of 73% for levels 1-3 means we are providing good support for those entry level programmes, with level 4 and over still sitting at a strong 70%.”

These results were achieved through a disruptive few years culminating in Skills Active’s transition from an industry training organisation (ITO) to its new private training establishment (PTE) Te Mahi Ako, which came about as a result of reforms of vocational education, Ms Frerichs says.

“Because the transition was completed in October, a lot of our learners who finished their programmes at the end of the year with Te Mahi Ako were recorded as non-completions for Skills Active. This has been acknowledged by the Tertiary Education Commission and explains why Skills Active’s overall credit achievement rate was a distorted 37%, while Te Mahi Ako’s was 100%.

“That said, there is still room to improve our credit achievement rate and get it above the industry training average of 67%, which has been a key focus for Te Mahi Ako.”

Providing better support for apprentices is another key focus for the new PTE, Ms Frerichs says.

“Positively, we awarded more qualifications to apprentices in 2022 than we have in any previous year. However, though the transition and higher uptake through the apprenticeship boost scheme had an impact, our apprenticeship completion rate of 29% is somewhere we need to improve, as is the number of apprentices retained after 12 months, which was 35%.

“These results highlight why the first goal for Te Mahi Ako is improving learner outcomes, with apprentices specifically highlighted as a learner group that requires attention from us.”

Te Mahi Ako is in a good position to hit these targets, Ms Frerichs says.

“As a PTE, Te Mahi Ako has more tools to support learners than Skills Active had as an ITO. It’s an exciting time for us – we now have a pastoral care team and have established a new learner support system to better listen to and care for our learners. But this is just the start, with much more work still to be done that will result in better learner outcomes.”

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