Latest news with #TePūkenga
Scoop
7 days ago
- Business
- Scoop
Te Pūkenga 2024 Annual Report Shows $122 Million Turnaround In Two Years
Te Pūkenga - New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST) has released its 2024 Annual Report, showing a $122 million turnaround within the two years it has existed as a single entity, and the first surplus for the organisation. The report shows a surplus of $16.6 million at the end of 2024, a $54.5 million (144%) improvement on the 2023 deficit of $37.9 million, and a $121.7 million (116%) improvement on the 2022 deficit of $105 million. Revenue has grown $68.4 million (5%) compared to 2023, and $188 million (15%) compared to 2022. Te Pūkenga Chief Executive Gus Gilmore acknowledged the hard work of staff (kaimahi) in achieving the results amid a tough economic climate as well as uncertainty for the institute. "Against a background of immense change and uncertainty, Te Pūkenga had a strong year. With 226,645 learners, including 90,919 trainees and apprentices, outcomes continued to improve, with course completion, including 10,828 trainees and apprentices completing their programmes and 45,146 graduating. We also had strong domestic and international enrolments for our Institutes of Technology and Polytechnic (ITP) divisions and increased our net promoter score. "The financial result, showing a 144% improvement on the previous year, is the outcome of focusing on addressing financial performance through an intensive cost savings exercise across all divisions, structural changes, vacancy management, lease reduction, property sales and programme rationalisation," said Mr Gilmore. Ākonga satisfaction increased to over 93% following a strong focus on improving learner support. For example, a partnership with Health New Zealand, with an investment of $4.1 million, saw more than 12,500 learners access mental health services - a 71% increase from 2023. Course completion rates across all priority groups - Māori, Pasifika and disabled learners - also showed an increase in 2024. Te Pūkenga also developed major commercial partnerships with national employers and international partners. Amongst the highlights are a successful partnership with Apple, which included the development of the Hangarau Matihiko (digital technology) micro-credential, training for 50 teachers in 12 Te Tai Tokerau schools, and more than 2,200 ākonga supported in strengthening their digital skills. A memorandum of arrangement was signed with the Centre for International People-to-People Exchange (CCIPE) from China to establish the New Zealand - China Vocational Cooperation and Development Alliance. It seeks to promote vocational education in both countries through talent cultivation, cross credits, student exchanges, and academic visits. Te Pūkenga also achieved many successful work-based training initiatives including the Connexis-run Girls with Hi-Vis (GWHV), seeking more women apprentices which last year co-hosted 36 events with employers, attracting more than 650 students from 98 schools. It was also the second year that events were co-hosted with BCITO for industry experience days onsite with companies in the civil infrastructure, electrical supply, water industries, building and construction sectors, and at some of the country's major infrastructure projects. Plumbing, Gasfitting, and Drainlaying (PGD) programmes were updated by EarnLearn to better align with industry demands and improve outcomes for employers and learners. Meanwhile Primary ITO achieved a 96% completion rate in its programme to develop a skilled and qualified workforce for Whakatōhea Mussels new farm and processing facility in Ōpōtiki with many of the learners securing full-time jobs afterwards. Research revenue exceeded expectations by 38% - $12.02 million compared to the target of $8.73 million, demonstrating the continued strength of rangahau and research within Te Pūkenga. The 2024 ITP Rangahau and Research Symposium, the largest and most diverse research event delivered by Te Pūkenga, attracted more than 275 submissions, representing the work of over 500 kairangahau (researchers) across diverse areas of rangahau and research, including Pacific research. "Looking back on the year 2024, our kaimahi can be very proud of the outcomes achieved for our learners and employers, and a good financial result for the sector during a time of significant change. We thank kaimahi for their continued commitment and manaakitanga even as they have faced uncertainty about their own futures." Year-to-date 2025 results show good growth on domestic and international enrolments for ITP divisions, while work-based learning divisions have seen an expected softening because of current market conditions. "There are still some hard decisions that need to be made this year to support the financial viability of individual divisions for their transition into new entities. "As we prepare for disestablishment, our focus remains on ensuring learners, employers, and kaimahi are well supported while we continue to deliver quality vocational education and training," says Mr Gilmore. You can read the report here: 2024 Annual Report: In summary, in 2024 Te Pūkenga network had:
RNZ News
7 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Te Pūkenga disestablishment continues despite $16.6m surplus
Savings came from winding down its Te Pūkenga's head office and regional campuses. Photo: supplied The New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, Te Pūkenga, finished last year with a $16.6-million surplus and $382m in the bank. The super-institute's annual report was tabled in Parliament on Thursday, showing a profit just as work accelerates to disestablish the organisation and return to a system of stand-alone polytechnics and work-based learning organisations at the start of next year. The report showed income increased $68.4m or five percent last year, much of it from growing international student enrolments, but it attributed much of its surplus to cost-cutting rather than increased earnings. "The financial result, showing a 144 percent improvement on the previous year, is the outcome of focusing on addressing financial performance through an intensive cost savings exercise across all divisions, structural changes, vacancy management, lease reduction, property sales and programme rationalisation," chief executive Gus Gilmore said in the report. Gilmore told RNZ the surplus was "a fantastic result" for the institute just two years after it was created to take over 16 polytechnics and nine industry training organisations. He said Te Pūkenga had budgeted and was on target for a break-even result this year. Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Last week, Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds told the Education and Workforce Select Committee that Te Pūkenga's result did not prove it was viable , and was possible because it had wound down spending on a centralised head office. Gilmore told RNZ some of this year's savings came from winding down its head office, but a lot also came from its regional campuses. "We had some 200 FTE's two years ago. That number is down to 52 during 2024, which is the period in focus. "We made a $6.5 million cost saving in the national office and overall we've seen steady reductions across a number of our business divisions as we reviewed the demand for some of the less profitable programmes," he said. "Yes, there was some cost reduction in the national office but there was also cost reduction within the the 25-odd business division. So we took a holistic approach right across the whole network. It wasn't simply about the national office. The national office isn't the greatest proportion of our cost. The greatest proportion of our cost is the delivery across the country." Gilmore refused to be drawn on whether the report showed that Te Pūkenga would have been financially viable had it been allowed to continue. "I don't have obviously those numbers in a hypothetical situation. What I can say is we've been really focused on revenue growth and cost reduction, obviously the two most important ingredients of returning to surplus," he said. He also would not comment on the scale of cuts recommended by financial advisers and how much remained to be axed. "In the low hundreds was the number of of redundancies in our 2024 report, we reported 288 redundancy payments, that is $9.5 million, which is similar to the number in 2023," he said. "There will be more this year, although I can't give you an exact number, but it's going to be in the magnitude of low hundreds." Asked if Te Pūkenga had sufficient reserves to recapitalise its polytechnics, Gilmore said that was a decision for government and last year's Budget had included a contingency for that purpose. The report included a $9.6m provision for an "onerous lease" on the Weltec and Whitireia downtown Wellington campus. It showed "impairment" of the Taradalde campus due to flood damage of $21.3m in 2023, $13.8m in 2024 and elsewhere showed a $15.5m insurance payment for work on Taradale campus. The report said the institute had ring-fenced cash reserves totalling $63.4m from five former polytechnics and eight former ITOs, as well as $51m in other financial assets from four former polytechnics and two former ITOs. It said Te Pūkenga's top-tier management of 5.1 FTE were paid $3.99m last year. However remuneration information elsewhere in the report said one employee was paid in the range of $470-479,999, three in the range of $380-389,999, and one in the range of $370-379,999. "Cessation payments" were made to 353 staff and totalled $10.77m, an average of $30,497. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
24-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Government begins Te Pūkenga disestablishment despite last year's $16.6-million surplus
Savings came from winding down its Te Pūkenga's head office and regional campuses. Photo: supplied The New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, Te Pūkenga, finished last year with a $16.6-million surplus and $382m in the bank. The super-institute's annual report was tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, showing a profit just as work accelerates to disestablish the organisation and return to a system of stand-alone polytechnics and work-based learning organisations at the start of next year. The report showed income increased $68.4m or five percent last year, much of it from growing international student enrolments, but it attributed much of its surplus to cost-cutting rather than increased earnings. "The financial result, showing a 144 percent improvement on the previous year, is the outcome of focusing on addressing financial performance through an intensive cost savings exercise across all divisions, structural changes, vacancy management, lease reduction, property sales and programme rationalisation," chief executive Gus Gilmore said in the report. Gilmore told RNZ the surplus was "a fantastic result" for the institute just two years after it was created to take over 16 polytechnics and nine industry training organisations. He said Te Pūkenga had budgeted and was on target for a break-even result this year. Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Last week, Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds told the Education and Workforce Select Committee that Te Pūkenga's result did not prove it was viable , and was possible because it had wound down spending on a centralised head office. Gilmore told RNZ some of this year's savings came from winding down its head office, but a lot also came from its regional campuses. "We had some 200 FTE's two years ago. That number is down to 52 during 2024, which is the period in focus. "We made a $6.5 million cost saving in the national office and overall we've seen steady reductions across a number of our business divisions as we reviewed the demand for some of the less profitable programmes," he said. "Yes, there was some cost reduction in the national office but there was also cost reduction within the the 25-odd business division. So we took a holistic approach right across the whole network. It wasn't simply about the national office. The national office isn't the greatest proportion of our cost. The greatest proportion of our cost is the delivery across the country." Gilmore refused to be drawn on whether the report showed that Te Pūkenga would have been financially viable had it been allowed to continue. "I don't have obviously those numbers in a hypothetical situation. What I can say is we've been really focused on revenue growth and cost reduction, obviously the two most important ingredients of returning to surplus," he said. He also would not comment on the scale of cuts recommended by financial advisers and how much remained to be axed. "In the low hundreds was the number of of redundancies in our 2024 report, we reported 288 redundancy payments, that is $9.5 million, which is similar to the number in 2023," he said. "There will be more this year, although I can't give you an exact number, but it's going to be in the magnitude of low hundreds." Asked if Te Pūkenga had sufficient reserves to recapitalise its polytechnics, Gilmore said that was a decision for government and last year's Budget had included a contingency for that purpose. The report included a $9.6m provision for an "onerous lease" on the Weltec and Whitireia downtown Wellington campus. It showed "impairment" of the Taradalde campus due to flood damage of $21.3m in 2023, $13.8m in 2024 and elsewhere showed a $15.5m insurance payment for work on Taradale campus. The report said the institute had ring-fenced cash reserves totalling $63.4m from five former polytechnics and eight former ITOs, as well as $51m in other financial assets from four former polytechnics and two former ITOs. It said Te Pūkenga's top-tier management of 5.1 FTE were paid $3.99m last year. However remuneration information elsewhere in the report said one employee was paid in the range of $470-479,999, three in the range of $380-389,999, and one in the range of $370-379,999. "Cessation payments" were made to 353 staff and totalled $10.77m, an average of $30,497. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
17-06-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Vocational Education Penny Simmonds says staff to student ratios at polytechnics abysmal
Vocational education minister Penny Simmonds. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds says the staff to student ratios have been abysmal. Appearing before the Education and Workforce Select Committee to answer questions about the government's Budget decisions for Tertiary Education, Simmonds said institutions' ratio of staff to students was critical for their viability. She said polytechnics had reduced their staff numbers by 8.2 percent on a headcount basis and about 4.9 percent on a full-time equivalent basis but their staff to student ratios were still lower than they were in 2016-17. "Those ratios are critical to the viability of an institution. If you're running at a ratio of less than one to 18 for academic staff to students, you are in financial trouble and they are low," she said. Simmonds said a number of polytechnics were "incredibly damaged by the last four or five years under Te Pūkenga". She said they had lost domestic enrolments, failed to rebuild international enrolments quickly, and had not responded quickly to changes. Simmonds said Te Pūkenga should have addressed staff surpluses at loss-making polytechnics more quickly. She said it had not become financially sustainable, even though it recorded a financial surplus last year. Simmonds and Universities Minister Shane Reti insisted government funding for tertiary education was increasing as a result of the Budget. Committee member and Labour Party MP Shanan Halbert said Budget figures showed total tertiary funding would drop $124m in the 2025/26 financial year to $3.79b. Tertiary Education Commission officials said the drop was due to the end of the previous government's temporary, two-year funding boost and moving the fees free policy to the final year of students' study. Simmonds said the government ended equity funding for Māori and Pacific students because it wanted to target extra funding to needs not ethnicity. She said if a Māori student who was dux of their school enrolled in a polytechnic qualification, their enrolment would attract the equity weighting, even though they had no need of additional support, which she said did not make sense. Tertiary Education Commission chief executive Tim Fowler told the committee enrolments had grown so much that institutions were asking for permission to enrol more students this year than they had agreed with the commission in the investment plans that determined their funding. "We've had most of the universities come to us and ask to exceed their investment plan allocation... over 105 percent this year. In previous years, I think we might have had one in the past decade, so unprecedented levels of enrolments," he said. Fowler said it was the commission's job to balance that growth, favouring government priorities such as STEM subject enrolments and removing funding from under-enrolled courses. "We're continually adjusting in-flight what that investment looks like and where we see areas where there is demand that we want to support we try and move money to it. Where there's areas of under-delivery, we try and take that out as quickly as we possibly can so it doesn't fly back to the centre - we want to reinvest it elsewhere," he said. "The challenge for us this year, there are far fewer areas of under-delivery than there is over-delivery." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Otago Daily Times
17-06-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Staff numbers at polytechnics abysmal: minister
By John Gerritsen of RNZ Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds says staff numbers at some polytechnics are so high they are abysmal. Appearing before the Education and Workforce Select Committee to answer questions about the government's Budget decisions for Tertiary Education, Simmonds said institutions' ratio of staff to students was critical for their viability. Claim govt setting up polytechs to fail She said polytechnics had reduced their staff numbers by 8.2% on a headcount basis and about 4.9% on a full-time equivalent basis but their staff to student ratios were still lower than they were in 2016-17. "Those ratios are critical to the viability of an institution. If you're running at a ratio of less than one to 18 for academic staff to students, you are in financial trouble and they are low," she said. Simmonds said a number of polytechnics were "incredibly damaged by the last four or five years under Te Pūkenga". She said they had lost domestic enrolments, failed to rebuild international enrolments quickly, and had not responded quickly to changes. Simmonds said Te Pūkenga should have addressed staff surpluses at loss-making polytechnics more quickly. She said it had not become financially sustainable, even though it recorded a financial surplus last year. Simmonds and Universities Minister Shane Reti insisted government funding for tertiary education was increasing as a result of the Budget. Committee member and Labour Party MP Shanan Halbert said Budget figures showed total tertiary funding would drop $124m in the 2025/26 financial year to $3.79b. Tertiary Education Commission officials said the drop was due to the end of the previous government's temporary, two-year funding boost and moving the fees free policy to the final year of students' study. Simmonds said the government ended equity funding for Māori and Pacific students because it wanted to target extra funding to needs not ethnicity. She said if a Māori student who was dux of their school enrolled in a polytechnic qualification, their enrolment would attract the equity weighting, even though they had no need of additional support, which she said did not make sense. Tertiary Education Commission chief executive Tim Fowler told the committee enrolments had grown so much that institutions were asking for permission to enrol more students this year than they had agreed with the commission in the investment plans that determined their funding. "We've had most of the universities come to us and ask to exceed their investment plan allocation... over 105% this year. In previous years, I think we might have had one in the past decade, so unprecedented levels of enrolments," he said. Fowler said it was the commission's job to balance that growth, favouring government priorities such as STEM subject enrolments and removing funding from under-enrolled courses. "We're continually adjusting in-flight what that investment looks like and where we see areas where there is demand that we want to support we try and move money to it. Where there's areas of under-delivery, we try and take that out as quickly as we possibly can so it doesn't fly back to the centre - we want to reinvest it elsewhere," he said. "The challenge for us this year, there are far fewer areas of under-delivery than there is over-delivery."
