The government today announced a raft of changes to the vocational training sector, which has been slammed by Invercargill MP Sarah Dowie as "disastrous for Southland".

In making the highly anticipated announcement, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the reforms were designed to tackle the long-term challenges of skills shortages and the mismatch between training provided and the needs of employers in what he labelled a "new dawn for work skills and training".

But Ms Dowie claimed it would instead cost thousands of jobs across the country and may be the final whistle for polytechnics like the well-performing Southern Institute of Technology (SIT).

Mr Hipkins said, while there were some bright spots, the current system was not set up to produce skilled people at the scale needed.

“New Zealand needs to lift productivity and for that to happen we need more companies to be involved in training and taking on more apprentices," he said.

“The changes we are making will give industry greater control over all aspects of vocational education and training, making the system more responsive to employers’ needs and to the changing world of work."

The seven key changes announced today are:

• Around four to seven industry-governed Workforce Development Councils will be created by 2022. This will give industry greater control over all aspects of vocational education and make the system more responsive to employers’ needs and to the changing world of work. The councils will replace and expand most of the existing roles of industry training organisations.  
• The country’s 16 institutes of technology and polytechnics will be brought together to operate as a single national campus network. A new Institute will start on 1 April 2020 and will be a new kind of organisation that provides on-the-job and off-the-job learning. The head office will not be in Auckland or Wellington, and a charter will be set out in legislation to make sure a number of bottom lines are met.
• New Regional Skills Leadership Groups will represent regional interests and will work across education, immigration and welfare systems in each region to identify local skill needs and make sure the system is delivering the right mix of education and training to meet them.
• Over the next two to three years, the role of supporting workplace learning will shift from industry training organisations to training providers. Holding organisations will be formed from Industry Training Organisations to smooth the transition  
• Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) will be established at regional campuses to drive innovation and expertise, and improve linkages between education, industry and research.
• Māori will be included as key partners, including through Te Taumata Aronui, a Māori Crown Tertiary Education Group – that will work with education agencies and Ministers and cover all aspects of tertiary education. This recognises the needs of Māori learners and that Māori are significant employers with social and economic goals, with an estimated national Māori asset base valued at over $50 billion.
• The dual funding system will be unified and simplified to encourage greater integration of on-the-job and off-the-job learning, ensure learners can access more work-relevant and tailored support, and enable new models of education delivery which are more responsive to employer and industry demand.

Ms Dowie said Southland employers had already told her they would stop employing apprentices next year if apprentices went back to polytechnics.

"This is a big step backwards especially when our construction sector is crying out for apprentices," she said.

"The Government has brutally dismissed the concerns of industry and businesses who raised serious issues with polytechnic training. Southland institutions and businesses are best placed to assess and deliver for the needs of Southlanders, but Education Minister Chris Hipkins is blatantly ignoring them."

She said the reforms would dissolve the SIT into a "hollow and meaningless 'legacy' campus".

"It is pulling down a successful, high-performing institution and creating a mediocre model which will reduce our competitiveness as a region."

Mr Hipkins said a lot of thought had been given to how to minimise disruption, and the Government had listened carefully to the concerns of employers, staff and students.

“We are not going to rush the implementation of the changes. To ensure continuity for learners and employers and to allow time to build new capacity, the transition will take three to four years to get fully underway,” he said.