← No 18 October 2006 | eNewsletters | No 16 September 2006 →
| Monitoring the Tertiary Education Strategy - ENewsletter |
| This eNewsletter bringing you highlights and updates on the monitoring and evaluation of the Tertiary Education Strategy. |
1. How has the TES been used?
The Ministry of Education commissioned Miles Shepheard (Synergia Ltd) to interview a range of people about the use and usefulness of the Tertiary Education Strategy 2002/07.
A main conclusion from the interviews is that the Tertiary Education Strategy has been useful to provide a broad sense of direction for the tertiary education sector. However, in order to influence change, the next Strategy will need be shorter, be well understood by the tertiary education sector and stakeholder groups, and have a stronger focus on key priorities.
Other findings from the interviews included:
- The Tertiary Education Strategy was well regarded as a position paper, but was generally seen as giving little sense of priorities, limiting its usefulness in decision making.
- The Statement of Tertiary Education Priorities was seen as the driver of change, largely through profiles and funding.
- Established organisations tend to use the Strategy to check that their existing policies comply and to retrofit their programmes to the funding requirements, rather than using the Strategy to drive substantive decision making.
- A number of organisations, which were undergoing changes, found the Strategy useful in plotting new directions, in redirecting activities and in speeding up processes of change.
- Some organisations, which have previously felt that their efforts were marginalised, now feel that their work is recognised. Chief amongst these are the organisations offering foundation skills.
- Māori and Pasifika interviewees had distinctive views. They strongly support the Strategy because they see it as assisting Māori and Pasifika capacity and capability building and they believe that the Strategy shows the direction for New Zealand’s future. However, they expressed considerable frustration about what they see as poor implementation.
- There were many specific changes suggested for the content of future documents and for the processes involved.
- A conclusion of the report that will help in the development of the next strategy is that the sector and stakeholders need a clear understanding of what is to be achieved, how that fits with their goals and aspirations, how change will come about and what their role in the change will be.
Click here to access the full report.
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2. Raising foundation skills
The section on “Raise Foundation Skills” has been updated in Monitoring Information.
Some interesting highlights from these pages include:
- The Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey is currently in the field. Results will be released next year. This survey will provide internationally comparable statistics on adult skill levels in prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy and problem-solving.
- The number of students undertaking substantial periods of foundation education through Student Component-funded courses peaked in 2003 and has since decreased, although numbers participating are still quite large. The decrease has been mostly at wānanga, although participation at ITPs also decreased in 2005.
- The number of industry trainees studying at level 1 and 2 continues to increase, and now makes up nearly a third of industry trainees.
- There has been a decline in the proportion of school leavers going into tertiary education (for a third of the year or more)in the following year. At the same time, the proportion of students leaving school in 2005 with qualifications below NCEA level 2 has increased.
- Two recently released reports from the Ministry of Education look at the movement of students from school to tertiary education, in terms of educational pathways and geographic access.
We welcome your comments on these pages. Use the comment box at the bottom of the page to add your comments. You will need to type in the 3-digit code as shown to post a comment. This is an anti-spam measure.
The rest of the Monitoring Information will be updated progressively over the next couple of months.
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