El canto para aprender conceptos

there a need to develop sector wide templates, tools and checklists for assessing opportunities and would they add value? How could the sector grow its market share and was there value in having a joined up (NZ Inc) approach?

All of the ITP’s interviewed agreed that New Zealand was lagging behind in offshore VET when compared to competitor countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. The perceived reasons behind the lag varied greatly, but there were some consistent themes that came out during this set of questions, variations included:

• New Zealand being a small and isolated player in a large international market. • Lacking scale.

• New Zealand ITP’s being conservative and risk adverse. • Lack of focus on internationalisation until recently. • Human resource constraints.

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• Barriers and constraints from New Zealand government bodies such as New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA).

• The domestic financial viability of individual institutes. • Current domestic funding environment.

• The level of financial risk that individual institutes get exposed to going offshore. • A fragmented ITP sector with high levels competition in New Zealand.

• Leadership who are lacking in international experience (organisational governance). • No coherent joined up sector wide approach.

All of the ITP’s were aware, to varying degrees, of the good practice guides, tool kits, templates and assessment matrixes available through organisations within competitor

countries, such as National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) in Australia, TVET Australia, TVET UK and the British Council. All of the ITP’s thought that the having similar tools, good practice guides and matrixes available to New Zealand providers would be of value to the sector as a whole.

“These types of tools would be very helpful”.

“We could definitely do with tools like that, we could adapt stuff that is already out there, modify it to fit the New Zealand context”.

“If they help us be more successful offshore, then they would be great, especially given the current state of government funding”.

Regarding the question, what could the sector do to grow it’s international market share, a couple of main themes appeared. One theme was about the development of a long-term sector vision in areas where New Zealand ITP’s are genuinely world leading and where the

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sector has real strengths and expertise, such as lower level trades training. Another theme to come from the interviews was around the development of a New Zealand methodology for offshore education, a ‘New Zealand way of teaching’.

“We need to work in the areas where we have real strengths and expertise. We should focus on vocational trades. The degree and post graduate market is really crowded”.

“If we developed and agreed on a New Zealand approach to experiential learning, with all ITP’s undertaking professional development and delivering in the same style and to the same standard, we could make some real impact as part of NZ Inc”.

“We need to present ourselves as a more unified front, as the Australian TAFE’s have done”. “We need a common front as New Zealand ITP’s offshore, focused on areas of true

expertise”.

Another main theme was around getting better support from government bodies such as New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) and Education New Zealand (ENZ).

“It would be helpful if NZQA could worker closer with ITP’s so that they could become an enabler and support the international education strategy”.

“ENZ could lead the ITP sector in the development of offshore VET delivery into specific markets or in specialist subject areas”.

“Currently the government bodies like NZQA seem to be focussed only on the rules around offshore education and aren’t looking at the opportunities to support New Zealand

providers”.

“It often feels like its easier for NZQA to say no than to work with us to get outcomes good for our organisation and for the country, they feel like a barrier not and enabler”.

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“Good strong government support for real market development, not just marketing. The likes of the British Council are working government to government, and we need to do that too”. “The British Council adds huge weight to UK providers going offshore”.

The final discussion point was around the value of having a joined up sector wide approach, a ‘NZ Inc’ approach. All of the ITP’s saw value in this approach. Many noted that it is very hard for a small country like New Zealand with relatively small institutes to stand out in a global context. All noted just how difficult it is to collaborate well.

“ Collaboration is really hard”.

“We are keen to collaborate, but there needs to be a really clear structure of how you are going to do it, collaborations can go bad really quickly”.

“NZ Inc is a nice snappy one-liner, but it needs to be about results not descriptions. What are the steps that get us to the overall goals?”

All also noted, that there have been many attempts at collaborating in the past and that unfortunately none of them have had long term success yet. Polytechnics International New Zealand (PINZ) was the example of a model that almost all thought came the closest to getting it right.

“There have been some good models, but no one has really cracked it yet”.

“PINZ was a good model, and probably before its time, but it morphed into a delivery agent and started to compete with its partners”.

“PINZ did a great job opening up opportunities but it then began to compete with New Zealand ITP’s”.

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“PINZ was a great idea, but after a while they started working independent from the ITP sector”.

“PINZ almost worked, it grew really quickly with the Bahrain project, then it morphed into being more loyal to Bahrain than the New Zealand ITP sector”.

Discussion:

The following discussion takes a broad view of the findings from the literature review, then compares and contrasts them with comments from the interviews to identify new insights.

The Use Of Templates, Decision-Making Tools, Checklists And Matrix:

As identified in the literature review, the TNE market is currently going through a huge a period of growth, which is predicated continue, at least in the mid term. Furthermore in the context of globalisation, TNE often flows from developed nations to developing nations (Naidoo, 2009).

This strong period of growth has lead to increasing competition in the market and, in my opinion, a ‘gold rush mentality’. With this mentality come increased levels of risk as

education provider’s rush into the market to get their piece of the action. The increased levels of risk come from being ill prepared for the complexities of offshore delivery.

“Offshore delivery is incredibly complex and it’s really easy to get your self into a difficult situation”.

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As previously mentioned all of the New Zealand ITP’s interviewed were aware, to varying degrees, of some of the tools available in competitor countries. A couple of the respondents had been in the position to use these tools in previous roles while working for providers from these countries, and believed that they added real value to the opportunity assessment and decision-making process.

“I’ve had the opportunity to use some of the tools and they are really good. They force you to review all of the opportunities in a systematic way”.

“I’ve used some in the past and they are really good”.

The main concept behind these tools is to improve and or increase the chances of the home countries education provider’s success when heading offshore. For example the following quote is taken from the introduction of the Australian Good Practice Guide for Offshore VET delivery.

“The Challenges/Risks/Good Practices diagram outlined provides an overall framework for the multiplicity of tasks which Australian providers need to do when planning and delivering Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) programs offshore.” (Foster et al, 2011, pg 4).

This quote, and many others cited during the literature review process, show that many of our VET competitor countries have widely available tools that strengthen the position of their providers as they head offshore, in terms of quality, risk, good practice and financial sustainability.

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countries, all said yes.

“It would be great if ENZ (or someone else) developed a set of frameworks that we could use to reduce our risk exposure, it would really help lead the sectors development offshore”. “There is no need to reinvent the wheel, great tools are out there, we just need an organizing body such as ENZ or NZQA to adapt them to fit a New Zealand context”.

As identified in the literature review, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of culture in the international education environment (Richards & Lee, 2004). Richards and Lee’s study identified gaps and links between Hofestede’s cultural dimensions framework with an enterprise-teaching framework. It clearly demonstrated that there isn’t a one size fits all model for TNE and that different models needed to be developed for different cultural contexts.

Considering what these tools, templates, checklist and so on are designed for, identifying the challenges, reducing risk, showing good practice, it would seem logical that similar tools, templates and checklists, are developed for New Zealand providers as a ways to increase the chances of success offshore whilst maintaining quality. It would also seem appropriate that tools for understanding cultural dimensions and how they link to teaching and learning frameworks are investigated further.

The development of an easy to follow set of templates, decision-making tools, checklists and matrixes that follow a systematic, formal processes, would reduce risk and deliver

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Government Agencies As Enablers:

The literature review identified one of the reasons education providers from many different countries got involved in TNE is directly related to the lack of public funding available in the home country. It is becoming necessary for education providers to secure alternative revenue streams if they wish to grow and remain relevant (Welch, 2009), (New Zealand Government, 2011). In New Zealand, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) funding for all tertiary education providers has remained relatively unchanged since 2008. Figures taken from the TEC website show that since 2010, TEC funding for ITP’s has actually decreased from $664 million to $600 million in 2015 (TEC, 2015). When you factor in inflation and the increasing cost of living and cost of delivery, the funding reduction becomes significant.

Moreover, given the context of the Tertiary Education Strategy (TES), with priority six stating that New Zealand tertiary education providers should increase the value of educational services and products delivered offshore (Ministry of Education & Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, 2015). When this is linked directly to the TES and the New Zealand Government’s Leadership Statement for International Education, which identified that education providers need to increase annual revenues from offshore educations services to at least $500 million by 2025, from a base of $100 million in 2011 (New Zealand

Government, 2011), it shows that ITP’s are currently under increasing pressure.

This identifies that New Zealand ITP’s are currently operating under constrained financial conditions at home, whilst at the same time being asked by central government to expand offshore. Further to this, many in the New Zealand ITP sector feel like central government agencies are a further barrier to success.

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“By going offshore we are exposing our individual organisations to massive risks, which we are expected to absorb with no view on how central agencies can support us”.

“We want to run full programmes offshore, but the costs (time and money) of compliance with NZQA is high and the process is really slow. These costs drive our price point up, which makes it even harder to compete, given the higher price point, especially against globally recognised big brands”.

“We need to remove the blockages to deliver offshore, in particular NZQA barriers. These can add huge amounts of time, energy and costs. Delivery offshore with NZQA approval is hard to get and is really slow, time consuming process”.

“It often feels like its easier for NZQA to say no than to work with us to get outcomes good for our organisation and for the country, they feel like a barrier not and enabler”.

One of the most consistent themes throughout the interviews was the role that government agencies could play in achieving success in regards to the TES and the Leadership Statement for International Education. Most importantly all of the ITP’s had a want to see government agencies as key enablers to their organisations individual success and the success of the sector as a whole. Many were aware of, and spoke positively of a working group set up with NZQA that is looking at the streamlining overseas approvals and were hopefully of positive results.

Considering the goals of the TES, the Leadership Statement for International Education and the current financial constraints of the domestic funding system, central agencies could work with the sector and individual ITP’s to remove some of the barriers relating to offshore delivery. They could develop systems, processes and support structures that spread, and or share the financial risks associated with the complexities of offshore delivery. Further to this, if New Zealand is to reach the goals set out in the government’s business growth agenda, then government should invest in its own agency or agencies so that they are acting as enablers for

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the sector. Finally as noted earlier with the British Council, the weight of a country’s government leading international initiatives should not be underestimated.

Opportunities In Trades Training:

A key part of this discussion is the linking of the literature review to the ideas and discussions from the interviews, that then lead to insights. For example if we link to the initial discussion with the Indonesian education official (that inspired this research) to the literature review, in particular, that TNE often flows from developed countries to developing countries. Then link this to the consistent themes from the interviews about New Zealand ITP’s focusing on our strengths and areas of expertise. Combined together, this leads to an interesting proposition. Should the New Zealand ITP sector be focusing on lower level trades training to low skilled workers in developing countries? This idea acknowledges trades training is an area where we have globally recognised strengths, especially when it is focused on areas of expertise, such as the primary sector, maritime, construction and so on.

“Everything we are hearing from governments offshore is that they require training in the lower level qualifications. If the customer starts to talk about this, then we need to find a way to deliver it”.

“We should try and do more work in the areas of our real strengths, like vocational trades”.

Most of the interviewees mentioned that this was an area they were interested in investigating in more detail. Importantly they also identified that there were issues that needed to be addressed in particular, around languages and teaching in English and the how the education would be funded by the developing country. The literature review identified that, generally speaking, VET is more costly to delivery than academic programmes.

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Further to this, some of the interviewees identified that having an agency that worked closely with ITP’s, bringing expertise, knowledge and knowhow when it comes to applying for development funding from the likes of NZ Aid, Asian Development fund and the World Bank, would add real value to the sector. Further to this the literature review identified that education is a focus of the development community (Tooley, 2005).

“We need resources and experience that we could all call on”.

The development of a model that focuses on the delivery of lower level trade training, linked to the idea of developing a New Zealand way of teaching experiential learning, and better access to aid funding, opens up some genuine opportunities for the New Zealand ITP sector, particularly in the developing countries of Asia.

A Joined Up Approach:

As identified during the summary of responses section, question 4, all of the ITP’s

interviewed saw value in a joined up approach for offshore VET, with many stating that this approach would help New Zealand and its providers standout in a busy and congested

international market. A model similar to the original PINZ model was noted as being worthy of further investigation. What the study revealed was that the ITP sector wanted an agnostic agency that was focussed on the growth for the ITP sector as a whole.

It is important to note that the New Zealand ITP, Wintec, now owns PINZ. Therefore PINZ as it currently stands probably isn’t the appropriate delivery mechanism, especially when consideration is given to the comments from interviewees about the high levels of

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“Our current competitive model is undermining progress right from the start”.

Another example is NZED, a collaboration between 16 of the 18 New Zealand ITP’s, to develop education business opportunities in India. Of note, not all of New Zealand’s ITP’s joined and the initiative was primarily funded by the ITP’s themselves.

A number of interviewees mentioned the potential for the ITP sector and the government to co-fund the agnostic agency, while other suggested that the agency be 100% government funded especially when considering the current domestic funding constraints. They also mentioned that the agency needs to be focused on developing opportunities, government-to- government relationships, building skills and capabilities for the sector, and that it shouldn’t make any profits in its own right.

“We don’t want a repeat of the previous mistakes, where things start off good and then things change and competition shows its head again ”.

Its focus needs to be on the developing a strong and globally competitive ITP sector that has the best opportunities to be successful offshore.

Finally, some respondents referred to Education New Zealand as potentially being that central agency but felt that ENZ wasn’t currently delivering these services.

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Conclusion

The literature review and qualitative study of nine of New Zealand’s 18 ITP’s investigated a number of areas and delivered a number of insights.

The study looked at nine of New Zealand’s ITP’s and their activity offshore, including delivery models and financial / commercial consideration. It also looked at the use of a formalised set of templates, checklists, decision-making tools, risk assessment matrix and systematic processes, and asked if these influenced the chance of a successful outcome when