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The Tertiary Education Strategy (TES) sets out the government’s medium- to long-term strategy for tertiary education. It:

• articulates the broad goals for the tertiary education system
• provides vision and direction on how the tertiary education system can meet the needs of students, research users and wider stakeholders
• sets a framework to guide planning and funding.

The TES covers all aspects of post-school education including:

• courses provided by universities, institutes of technology and polytechnics (ITPs), colleges of education, wānanga, private training establishments (PTEs) and other tertiary education providers
• foundation education through to doctorates
• industry and workplace training
• employment training and second chance education
• adult and community education.

In general, the TES focuses on improving the ability of tertiary education organisations (TEOs) to manage for improved outcomes, rather than setting specific outcome targets. This is to be achieved through a mix of shifting attitudes and culture and the implementation of new funding and accountability policies.

There is an expectation that the progress of the tertiary education system towards the goals of the TES will be monitored and evaluated.

The TES is made up of six inter-related strategies:

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Across these strategies there are 35 objectives. While the objectives are presented as relating to one of the six strategies, many of them are interconnected and overlap with key concepts in other strategies.

In addition, there are nine key changes threaded through the objectives that relate to increasing the relevance, connectedness and quality of the tertiary education system, and provide a focus on the overall changes sought throughout the system. The key changes are:

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The TES is supported by the Statements of Tertiary Education Priorities (STEPs), which are released every one to three years and set out the government’s immediate priorities for the performance of the system.

The priority areas in the 2005 STEP are:

• investing in excellence in teaching, learning and research
• increasing the relevance of skills and knowledge to meet national goals
• enabling students and learners to access excellent and relevant tertiary education, and progress to higher levels of study and achievement
• enhancing capability and information quality in the tertiary system to support learning, teaching and research.

← Foreword by the Secretary for Education | Home Page | Monitoring the TES →

• Table of Contents

• The State of Play

• Cross Strategy Indicators

• Raise foundation skills

• Skills for our knowledge society

• Strengthen research and knowledge creation

• Te rautaki mātauranga Māori

• Pacific people’s development and success

• Capability and quality

• Technical and Data Definitions