NZPA reports that the National and Labour parties are both supporting measures aimed at providing greater accountability and higher standards for private training establishments (PTEs) involved in export education.

The minister for tertiary education Steven Joyce announced last week that the government is introducing changes in the Education Amendment Bill (No 4) next year, which will give the New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA) greater powers to monitor, investigate and enforce compliance PTEs, and raise the threshold to register as a PTE.

Mr Joyce said legislation around PTE registration has not kept up with the changes and growth in the sector over the past 20 years.

“The current measures available for managing performance in this sector are insufficient in today’s conditions. NZQA’s work to drive improvements in the lowest performing PTEs is currently hampered by the out-dated nature of the legislative provisions and inconsistencies within them.”

The legislation will also allow PTEs to keep more money when refunding international students who withdraw from a course. Mr Joyce says this will remove the financial incentive for students to downgrade their courses once onshore and change to other providers who provide much cheaper courses which may be of lower quality.

Labour’s tertiary education spokesman, Grant Robertson, welcomed the changes and said some PTEs were not up to scratch.

“While there are some high quality PTEs working with international students, there are others who are not meeting standards and a few who are just ripping people off,” he said.

Mr Robertson said that if the NZQA was to be given an increased role in ensuring higher standards were met, it would need a boost in resources and capacity.