A vocational education blackout.

Te Pūkenga has released a tranche of reports related to the ‘viability’ of regional polytechnics on their website. The reports, commissioned at the behest of the Minister of Vocational Education and the TEC “for each Te Pūkenga ITP business division”, present “options and possible initiatives and activities that could improve the financial viability and financial positions of each business division.”

The six reports that have been proactively released so far relate to MIT, Unitec, Open Polytechnic, Ara, NMIT and Tai Poutini Polytechnic. All six contain significant portions that have been ‘blacked-out’ which constrains Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union’s ability to scrutinise them.

Te Pou Ahurei Takirua – Ahumahi | Assistant National Secretary – Industrial, Daniel Benson-Guiu says “reading between the blacked-out lines, what we can see is how much of Aotearoa will be living in the shadow of the vocational education blackout this government’s cost cutting will cast.”

“With the reports showing the West Coast’s Tai Poutini Polytechnic in urgent need of an annual cash injection of $4-6 million to survive and the Timaru campus of Ara facing a deeply precarious future – there’s a very real threat that Christchurch and Nelson will be the only places to attend a polytechnic in the top two thirds of the South Island – geographically that’s almost a hundred square kilometres.”

“It’s hugely problematic that both through censorship of the reports and the government’s slow progress, the people and communities of regions like the West Coast, Marlborough, and South Canterbury remain in the dark and unable to have a substantive say about this mess.”