Vocational training has been reformed again, with the replacement of Te Pukenga by 10 new polytechs and eight Industry Skills Boards, including our own Energy and Infrastructure ISB, that will cover civil construction and extraction. By Hugh de Lacy.
Eight regionally governed Industry Skills Boards (ISBs) will lead standard-setting and qualification development with the country’s polytechnics, which have taken over most of the disestablished Te Pukenga – NZ Institute of Skills & Technology’s functions, programmes, assets and staff.
Recapitalisation of the system is funded by NZIST cash reserves, and the ISBs will manage the existing work-based training during the transition period while new arrangements are developed across polytechnics, private training establishments (PTEs) and wananga (Maori learning and teaching).
Minister for Vocational Education, Penny Simmons, says her Government has set up the $20 million Strategically Important Provision (SIP) fund for the 2026 and 2027 transition period. This fund supports courses that are “strategically important to regional and national workforce needs” but may “not otherwise be financially viable to deliver”, she says.
Delivering work-based learning in the infrastructure and extractives sectors is the Energy and Infrastructure ISB (EIISB), whose government appointees (for a three-year term) are Wayne Scott, the CEO of both the AQA and MinEx, and Andrea O’Brien, the General Manager for training at Northland electricity distributor – Northpower.
The other board members are our own Alan Pollard (CCNZ), Mark Pizery, and John Carnegie (Chair). The Chief Executive is Philip Aldridge.
The EIISB describes itself as “the caretakers of work-based learning for our industry” – managing training provided by Wellington-based extraction infrastructure training organisation MITO, and Christchurch-based infrastructure training organisation Connexis, with both providing training for a number of other ISBs.
The Construction and Specialist Trades ISB appointees are: Gregory Wallace, Tina Wieczorek, David Kelly (Chair), David Fabish, and Paul Hallahan. CEO is Erica Cumming.
Manufacturing and Engineering: Nathan Busch, Dr James Neale, Trent Fearnley (Chair), Jamie Lorton, and Ruth Cobb. CEO is Bill Sole.
The Transport ISB Board is made up of: Shaun Johnson, Suhail Sequeria, Jennifer Moxon (Chair) and Sherelle Kennelly. The CEO is Samantha McNaughton.
Industry training didn’t see the computer coming
Political ideology aside, we can also blame the computer for the topsy-turvy evolution of industry skills training since 1992, when the Parliament of the day thought it had legislated a long-term solution to an ever-worsening skills shortage with the Industry Training Act of that year.
It was the first move away from the old apprenticeship system that the country had inherited from Mother Britain and the Industrial Revolution and which was proving unsuccessful – indeed, it was stifling – the emergence of new skills to cope with ever-diversifying trade demands.
It was assumed at the time that the Industry Training Act 1992 would serve for generations, just as the apprenticeship system had, but what hadn’t been taken into account was that new device – the computer. The computer revolution hadn’t taken over from the industrial one when the Industry Training Act was passed, but that most spectacular of all technological revolutions occurred over the next decade or so.
The resultant explosion in demand for workers with previously unheard-of skills was fuelled by the simultaneous explosion in the trade and professional niches it generated. As a result, the Industry Training Act, the 50-odd Industry Training Organisations (ITOs) it had spawned, and the National Qualifications Framework (NQT) under which they operated, eventually couldn’t cope.
This was becoming apparent by 2010, when a review of the system saw the number of ITOs reduced to just 11 by 2018.
The next big change came between 2020 and 2023 when the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform Act) came in, creating Workforce Development Councils (WDCs), and absorbing the ITOs into a unified national vocational education body called the Te Pukenga – NZ Institute of Skills & Technology, which was set up in 2020 as a unified body for 25 polytechnics.
This institute body will be abolished by early next year under the 2025 Education and Training Amendment Act, with industry training returning to regional autonomous polytechnics.