Home Page | Purpose →

The Tertiary Education Strategy

The 2002/07 Tertiary Education Strategy (TES) is the centrepiece of a series of reforms of the tertiary education system. The role of the strategy is to present a vision of the development of New Zealand’s tertiary education system and to show how this development is consistent with, and linked to, the government’s broader vision for economic and social development.

The strategy is not a ‘top-down’, prescriptive document, with detailed plans and targets. Rather, it is intended as a framework for thinking about improved tertiary education outcomes; it is expected that it will be responded to in different ways in different parts of the system. However, it is intended that publicly funded tertiary education would be consistent with the overall strategy and its goals and outcomes.

The strategy is supported by Statements of Tertiary Education Priorities (STEPs), which set out shorter-term priorities in more specific detail. The first STEP, in 2003, provided a breakdown of areas of responsibility for achieving the strategy, between government agencies and tertiary education organisations. The second STEP, in 2005, had a much stronger emphasis on specific priority areas.

The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) gives effect to the STEP through negotiating charters and profiles, allocating funding and facilitating consultation and greater connectedness within the system.

Charters and profiles

As part of the 2002 tertiary education reforms, the government introduced a system of charters and profiles for all publicly funded tertiary education organisations (TEOs). These provide the basis for funding negotiations between providers and the TEC.

A charter is a high-level governance document that provides a broad description of a TEO’s activities and education provision. A charter covers up to a 10-year period and:

• sets out the TEO’s mission and role in the tertiary education system
• is intended to cover a medium- to long-term timeframe
• provides the basis for the development of the TEO’s profile.¹

A profile describes in much greater detail how the high-level goals in the TEO’s charter will be implemented. A profile is submitted annually to the TEC as part of the overall funding negotiations and:

• sets out the TEO’s operating plans, key policies and proposed activities over the next three years
• sets out the TEO’s objectives, and the performance measures and targets used to measure performance
• sets out the short- to medium-term direction of the TEO
• identifies the activities of the TEO for which it seeks or receives funding from the TEC and the basis on which funding will be sought.²

The TEC sets content and criteria for profiles. These include a requirement that each TEO demonstrates its alignment with the TES and the STEP.

Profiles were first introduced in 2003, for the 2004/06 period, for all public tertiary education institutions, industry training organisations (ITOs) and a selected group of private training establishments (PTEs). This first round was termed ‘interim profiles’. From 2004, all publicly funded TEOs were required to produce full profiles.

There are two main parts to profiles. Part A deals with the TEO’s strategic direction and activities. Part B sets out the objectives and performance measures and the areas for which funding is provided and sought.

What do profiles represent?

The government view

The Gazette notice for 2005/07 profiles emphasises the multiple purposes that government sees these documents serving:

TEO views

The evaluation of the TES found that TEOs generally thought about the TES as a government strategy, and charters and profiles as a compliance and funding mechanism. “Interviewees overwhelmingly stated that the primary driver for change was through the funding mechanism. … Some pointed out that while they would react, the real drivers … were their own strategies.”.⁴

Where organisations were undergoing significant change, they reported that they found the TES, as implemented through the STEP, charters and profiles, to be “useful in plotting new directions, in redirecting activities and in speeding up processes of change which had been initiated under other circumstances.” Established or stable organisations tend to “use the strategy to check that their existing policies comply, and that current requirements for funding can be justified under the strategy. They look to their own strategic and other plans for the rationale for decisions.⁵”

TEOs demonstrate a diversity of approaches to writing profiles. Profiles vary in length from 40 to over 400 pages. Some appear to be precis of existing strategies and objectives, while others appear to represent new work and thinking about strategic directions, backed up with significant environmental scanning. A range of capability in strategic planning and presentation of business documents is also evident across the profiles.

A system information view

Taking these two somewhat different views of what profiles represent, some conclusions can be drawn about the system-level information they contain.

1. Profiles are a product of the funding process of the TEC:
   • They are a response by TEOs to a set of government priorities for allocation of funding.

   • To varying degrees, the content of profiles is determined by the TEC guidelines.

   • They need to be treated as partial and selective views of TEO priorities and activities. This is not to say that TEOs are being in any way deceptive, but rather that they are presenting a case that best fits with their understanding of government priorities.

2. Profiles represent an organisation-wide view of goals, objectives, priorities and activities:
   • They are developed by senior managers and signed off by councils and boards, and are best seen as representing views at this level.

   • The fact that a profile is silent on a particular area does not necessarily mean that there is no activity in this area. It may just be that it is not seen as significant or an immediate area of priority by senior management and governors. It may well be that the TEO has well-established activity in the area that it regards as ‘business as usual’ and hence, it does not get highlighted in the objectives. Or it may be that the organisation has yet to formalise a set of activities in a way that can be articulated in objectives and/or identified with government priorities.

3. Profiles do contain the TEO’s own thinking about strategy, direction and priorities:
   • There is an expectation from government that TEOs will focus on achieving the priorities and objectives set in the profiles — so therefore they need to fit with what the TEO is actually doing and planning.

   • The organisational objectives and performance measures are generally reported against in the TEO’s annual report.

   • The documents are public and therefore represent a broader accountability of TEOs to their communities, learners and stakeholders.

   • How strategy, direction and priorities are presented will vary according to the level of change going on within the organisation, and the level of capability within the organisation.

4. It is difficult to draw conclusions from profiles about the extent to which the TES has influenced change within TEOs or whether TEOs are justifying existing strategies and priorities within the framework of the TES and STEP:
   • Changes presented in profiles are as likely to be driven by the organisation’s pre-existing strategies as by the TES and STEP.

   • The change focus in profiles may be on where the organisation is weakest and areas of strength aligning with the TES may not be mentioned or emphasised.

Nevertheless, profiles can provide one source of information on how TEOs are considering their strategies, priorities and objectives and how well these align, across the system, with government strategies, priorities and objectives.

¹ Education Act 1989, s159L. (↑)

² Education Act 1989, s159W. (↑)

³ New Zealand Gazette, 4 March 2004. These purposes were first articulated in the Report of the Working Party on Charters and Profiles in 2001 and have been repeated in each subsequent Gazette notice. (↑)

⁴ Miles Shepheard, Making Use? — views on the use and usefulness of the Tertiary Education Strategy 2002/07, Ministry of Education, 2006, p 10. (↑)

⁵ op cit p 9. (↑)

Home Page | Purpose →

• Contents

• Background
• Purpose
• Methodology

• Overall findings
• Alignment across the six strategies

• Foundation skills
• Skills for a knowledge society
• Research and knowledge creation
• Te rautaki mātauranga Māori
• Pacific Peoples’ development and success
• Capability and quality

*Appendix 1: Mapping of analysis areas to TES and STEP Δ

*Appendix 2: Results of statistical tests Δ