ITOs and NZQA - partners in the future
By Karen Poutasi, CE, New Zealand Qualifications Authority
14 July 2006 |
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A presentation to the Hospitality Standards Institute Fourth National Hospitality Training Conference
Firstly, thank you for inviting me to your Fourth National Hospitality Training Conference and also, can I be among the first to congratulate the winners of the Hospitality Standards Institute (HSI) Excellence in Training Awards, which will be announced this evening. Celebrating excellence is tremendously important, if we are to continue focussing on quality.
As you know, I am new to the education sector, having now been in my role as Chief Executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority for two and a half months. Yet much of it is oddly familiar, reflecting my previous life in the health sector. The parallels are considerable. Both matter. Both matter in terms of fundamental welfare and customer service. Both matter too in that everyone is interested in health and education - everyone has an opinion; everyone is affected; everyone has a story to tell. And like health, the education sector is complex, with numerous participants in it, in most cases motivated by a desire to deliver quality and to be successful. The theme of your conference - 'Partnering for Success' - is aligned with these thoughts.
So it is with particular pleasure that I come to this gathering.
I have been asked to speak on 'The government factor - working with the framework'. Industry Training Organisations are profoundly important for New Zealand's future. This is not idle flattery. The fact is, we now have an economy in which everyone, or nearly everyone, has to be skilled in some way if they want to be successful and to participate in the economy productively. And, of course, here today we are talking about the hospitality industry. When you think about the past, we long had institutions that catered to a small academic elite. So too, we long had an education system that consigned way too many people to being providers of unskilled labour and nothing more. That might have been all right once, maybe, when we had a protected economy, but those days are long gone.
Now the Industry Training Organisations (such as HSI), the polytechnics, wānanga, private training enterprises, business and schools are leading the charge for life-long learning for everyone who wants it and for that learning to be recognised. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority is honoured to be in partnership with you in achieving this task. This work will make such a difference to the lives of individuals and to New Zealand.
So what is that partnership?
Industry Training Organisations (ITOs), as of course you know, set skill standards for industry. ITOs then arrange for the delivery of training programmes and qualifications. And HSI provides industry leadership by identifying skill needs, developing strategic training plans, and promoting training.
The Tertiary Education Commission funds ITOs to do these things. This funding is for the delivery of training programmes and qualifications based on national qualifications, that is, based on standards and qualifications registered by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority on the National Qualifications Framework.
The Qualifications Authority quality assures standards and qualifications developed by ITOs against National Qualifications Framework criteria. We monitor your management of your national external moderation system, and we audit you against the Quality Assurance Standard for ITOs. ITOs also apply to NZQA for accreditation to register assessors to assess and report against National Qualification Framework (NQF) standards.
So you can begin to see how NZQA works in partnership with HSI, training providers and schools, so that you can provide the best training and qualifications for your industry.
Of course, nothing stands still. A recent development in our joint work has been the creation of the Quality Assurance Standard for ITOs, which was developed in partnership with the Industry Training Federation (ITF). The QA Standard for ITOs was finalised and implemented last year following a very successful trial with four ITOs. The Standard is intended to provide an enabling framework that encourages ITOs to do well and to do things right. Our ITO audits are designed to ensure that ITOs have robust quality systems in place to support their contribution to education and training in New Zealand.
Feedback from the six ITOs and auditors involved in the audits to date is that these have all gone very well and the partnership approach developed in the trial has been maintained.
Our next joint piece of work in this area will be an exploration of the Qualifications Authority publishing the audit reports on our website, just as we do with PTE audits. We have already had some good conversations on this matter with the ITF and the ITOs who are members of the Consultative group. I know that they will be consulting with the other ITOs.
I want now to change tack and salute the way ITOs are entering into partnerships with secondary schools, though a particular example. Again this fits the theme of education for everyone in the form that fits their individual needs and promotes excellence across the board.
That example, of course, is one from HSI.
Currently HSI is facilitating the provision in schools of tuition at level 1 in accommodation services, cookery, food and beverage services and hospitality operations.
I understand that there has been some initial work done in extending this to level 2.
Let me quote from your website which reports that your sector employs over 100,000 people in New Zealand. The website says Hotels, specialty accommodation, bars, cafes, restaurants and so much more - they're screaming out for good people looking to make a career out of working, managing or owning a successful hospitality business. No other industry has thousands of opportunities every day for good people looking to be a success. A career in Hospitality can take you as far as you want to go - from across town to across the world! From kitchen hand to owning your own hotel!
You've also noted that to that end, foundation learning has been developed for schools as a starting point for a career in the sector . Through this, students can start to build a career in hospitality even while still at school. Schools can develop programmes that incorporate either a few units, or take the plunge, and structure their programmes to lead their students towards achieving a National Certificate in Hospitality at Level 1.
Isn't it one of the great things about the National Qualifications Framework that ITOs and schools can work together so that students can do this at the same time as working also towards achieving their NCEAs? And if they happen to leave before completing these or other National Certificates, they can complete their qualifications at tertiary institutes or in the workplace.
You've even put some fun into this with the launching of the national HSI Secondary Schools Hospitality Challenge Competition, with in addition a food and beverage competition.
The competitions are aimed at senior secondary students who are studying hospitality at school, and are considering a career or further study in the hospitality industry. Millennium Hotels and Resorts are sponsoring the winning teams with work experience at one of their many properties in New Zealand.
I've quoted what you are doing because it is such a terrific story, and emblematic of a much bigger picture of good people doing great things.
I now turn to yet another feature of our shared environment. As you know, the Government is undertaking major reforms of the way the tertiary education sector is organised.
Central to the Government's intent is the requirement that tertiary provision be less fragmented, so that, instead, providers play more to their strengths. The Government wants to know that its investment in tertiary education is going into a sector that plans its activities in terms of a strategic overview and in which delivery comes via an integrated network of providers. This will require, in part, an alternative to measuring the success of a course by the number of students enrolled.
As set out in Tertiary Education Reforms: the next steps, these reforms collectively will create a fundamentally different investment system for tertiary education. As a result The Statement of Tertiary Education Priorities (STEPs) becomes a highly significant document for setting the priorities in this system.
Tertiary Education Organisations will be clearer about what is expected of them, better equipped to achieve what is expected of them, and more able to stay on a steady course. The funding regime will incentivise them to concentrate more on quality of outcomes and not solely on numbers of students enrolled.
In return, the Government and the public will have greater confidence that the tertiary education system offers value for money, because there will be better information available about where funding is going, the quality of institutions, and the outcomes being achieved.
So how then might these reforms impact on ITOs? The Government hasn't made final decisions yet. But I think the importance of this for you may lie in the concept of a network of provision. ITOs, possibly through their regional representatives, will need to contribute to discussions and decisions about what shall be delivered and where, region-by-region.
The ultimate focus in these reforms is for better provision for learners, so that they are more likely to succeed in tertiary education, both because they are more likely to successfully complete their study, and because they are more likely to acquire skills needed in the New Zealand economy now and in the future.
I am aware, from the ITF response to the Tertiary Education Reforms: The next steps, that you have on your agenda the issue of industry-training funding, relative to the funding that providers receive pegged to student numbers. You are also recommending that the Government consider how to balance the development of system-wide measures of quality with the development of more tailored and appropriate quality measures for individual organisations.
Finally, two brief comments about the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and its work.
Firstly, we are currently working with business and employer groups to develop better ways of presenting learners' results. We've identified that our Records of Learning are not always as helpful as they should be. Yes, they contain a wealth of rich data that is immensely useful to teachers, schools and tertiary institutions. However, that very wealth of data can be overwhelming, for example, for a small-to-medium business that is trying to shortlist for a job. The feedback that we've received suggests that some kind of logical grouping of results might be better. So we are working on that now and various options are being considered. This will not replace the Record of Learning, but will refine it or provide some kind of additional summary document. Watch this space.
And, in terms of the Qualifications Authority itself, to quote the Education Review, which was quoting me, what I want is to see is the authority put back in the Authority. As you know, we are making a series of structural and cultural changes that we think will help us significantly lift our game. This is not being done for its own sake. For our work to be effective, it needs a broad level of public support. For the most part the public's experience of education comes from their experience of providers, be they schools or tertiary providers. But also the public expects that there is an assessment administrator and quality assuror that sits in the background as a 'blue chip' guarantor of standards, a bit like a bank standing behind a currency. In education that's NZQA as it has to be and, I am determined, as it will be.
Thank you.