Three initiatives that aim to improve teaching and learning in tertiary education are coming to an end.
Explaining to Cabinet how she proposed to finance the new VET structure, Minister Penny Simmonds wrote that funding for Ako Aotearoa, the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, is to stop. And that the TEC will stop funding Tūwhitia Accelerating Learner Success, a programme that provides seeding grants for provider initiatives to lift the performance of their learners[1]. Plus, of course, funding for the two Centres of Vocational Excellence, the CoVEs – two groups focused on improving teaching and learning in VET – is disappearing at the end of this year, meaning those two organisations are fast approaching their closure.
Does the government care about the processes of teaching and learning, the processes that lie at the centre of education, that are the key to how people acquire skills and knowledge? Sure, government cares about attainment of qualifications, about completion rates, about how many qualified and skilled people the system delivers and how efficiently providers deliver their teaching. Government cares about measures and assessments of the quality of providers’ work…. But measuring attainment and assessing teaching and learning go only so far in explaining the quality and performance of the system. Exploring how and why teaching processes work, digging into how and why learning occurs, using that information to help instructors improve their practice and to support providers to improve their delivery processes – that’s the bit that has been targeted in this set of changes. Things that the Minister, in her paper, describes as ‘nice-to-have’.
Naturally, the TEC wants providers to improve their learners’ success; it developed its Ōritetanga Learner Success Framework to encourage providers to lift achievement and reduce disparities. In that programme, the TEC provided information on best practice models of lifting achievement, and they created a forum for providers to share their models and their progress. Tūwhitia was intended to power up that process – a contestable fund that would support institutions’ learner success pilots, creating models for improving learning that could be disseminated more widely[2]. But, in cutting that fund, the government has, in effect, drawn a line around how far TEC’s work in building capability in teaching and learning can go. It can disseminate information, it can advise but it won’t be able to provide funding for innovative pilots.
The role of the government and TEOs in teaching and learning
In its definition of ‘academic freedom’, the Education and Training Act 2020 includes:
- “… the freedom of the institution and its staff to regulate the subject matter of courses taught at the institution
- the freedom of the institution and its staff to teach and assess students in the manner that they consider best promotes learning …”.[3]
In other words, by law, the government may not play any part in deciding on or regulating the processes of teaching and learning; the government has the right to treat those processes as a black box, leaving all decisions on what is taught and how to the experts in the TEOs. The TEO must meet government’s quality assurance requirements, comply with government’s funding rules and meet government’s expected performance measures. But the processes that underpin those three government requirements are for the TEO to design, develop and manage, without government intervention or participation.
On the other hand, government has a role in orchestrating the system as a whole, helping TEOs not just to meet government’s bare requirements but to strive for ever higher performance, performance that will strengthen the system and improve outcomes overall. That was the rationale for Ako Aotearoa, for the CoVEs and for Tūwhitia, the three initiatives slated for closure. Not intervening – but, rather, facilitating, providing opportunities for the professionals in TEOs to advance and strengthen their practice. And, in the case of Ako Aotearoa and the CoVEs, providing funding for practice-based research into aspects of teaching and learning, research intended to help teaching professionals to improve their practice[4].
Unlike teachers in the school and ECE sectors, tertiary instructors are not required to have teaching qualifications. Many TEOs have mechanisms (like teaching and learning development centres) that can strengthen teaching practice. Ako had an important role in supporting TEOs’ teacher development work (and also, initiatives that came out of Tūwhitia projects) by disseminating and being a champion for good practice. Without the three measures that are to be cut, best practice risks being left to chance.
One thing the minister definitely got right: these things are “nice to have“. Very, very nice to have. Very important to have. I argue that the system is very much the poorer for their loss.
The state of analysis of and research into tertiary teaching and learning
I lament the loss of Ako, of the CoVEs, of Tūwhitia because they help TEOs improve their teaching practice and lift learner achievement. They explore what makes for good practice in teaching and learning and they create forums to disseminate and share good practice. Practical, grounded research on professional practice can demonstrate what works in lifting learner success and why. They help TEO leaders explore, develop and trial systems that help instructors deliver better support for learners at risk. Their work helps underpin improvement in the system.
Look …. The government agencies do analysis of tertiary education, but only into aspects of the system that are linked to the government’s roles in the system. Meaning, they analyse system performance, TEO performance, matters like access to tertiary education, completions of tertiary education, outcomes of graduates, efficiency, value for money. They generate lots of data, they analyse the data to inform ministers and shape policy, and they publish material to inform sector professionals and to honour the expectation of accountability to the public. They do a good job.
But of teaching and learning, pretty much nothing. That’s because teaching and learning lie outside the role of the government agencies. And, given the legislation, maybe that’s as it should be.
So who does look into the processes of teaching and learning? Who – outside those commissioned by Ako or by the CoVEs (or the WDCs, for that matter) – who does the research, who creates the knowledge of what works and of how to lift learning? Who advises the professionals in TEOs?
Of course, larger TEOs have professional development units. And conscientious leaders of smaller TEOs will look for professional development opportunities for their instructors. But with Ako and the CoVEs folding, that’s about to get harder.
… the state of research on tertiary teaching and learning …
In TEOs
Much of the focus of education research in university education departments is on schools and ECE. That’s because university research is usually (and should be) linked to the academic’s teaching. And university education departments have a focus on ECE and school-level education, with many delivering professional teacher training programmes focused on schools or ECE services. A very small number of education academics look at education beyond school – some of them building on their experience as teachers or in their own research degrees[5]. And some academics in other fields research teaching and learning, sparked by their own practice as instructors[6]. And the professional development centres in larger institutions have staff who are specialists in the practice of teaching, who research in the area of teaching and learning and disseminate good practice[7]
Much of the academic research interest in tertiary education is in the literature on economics, the labour market, skills, the social sciences rather than education and hence, is not oriented towards the scholarship of teaching and learning[8].
Some university academics with an interest in researching tertiary education belong to the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA). While the focus of HERDSA is on higher education (rather than all forms of tertiary education) and while HERDSA’s interests extend into all aspects of education, the scholarship of teaching and learning is one of its focus areas.
While HERDSA is (inevitably) dominated by Australian academics and while the HERDSA journal attracts research from throughout the world, the organisation does create a space for NZ academics interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
NZCER
The NZ Council for Educational Research (NZCER) is set up under its own Act to “… foster the study of and research into … [education] … and to prepare and publish … reports … of value to teachers and other persons”[9]. While the Act doesn’t specify the organisation’s focus, NZCER’s attention is almost exclusively on ECE and school education; their main area of interest beyond school has been on transitions from school[10], plus a small number of commissions[11]. Post secondary education is a very, very marginal focus for NZCER
NZCER administers the government’s main fund for commissioning research into teaching and learning – the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI). Although the TLRI is intended to cover all of education, predictably, only around 15% of the projects funded by NZCER via the TLRI in the twenty plus years of its existence have looked at post school topics[12].
NZARE
The NZ Association for Research on Education (NZARE) has a small interest group that looks at adult education, but it has few members and is not especially active. On NZARE’s blog site Ipu Kererū, two of the 40 most recent posts were on post-secondary education and two on research. So, just 10% in all.
NZARE has a journal, the NZ Journal of Educational Studies. The three most recent issues had 82 items, four of them on tertiary education matters, two on transitions from school and two on research questions. Less than 10% in all.
Meaning
The sector, overall, produces very little grounded, practical analysis of or research on teaching and learning beyond school. And there is little active dissemination of tertiary-related findings.
… but Ako and the CoVEs made a difference …
A group of teaching and learning researchers and analysts grew up around Ako Aotearoa over its twenty years – some academics, some independent – and were funded to conduct practice-oriented research on tertiary education. Practice-oriented so that the findings are available to tertiary instructors and are adaptable to different forms of tertiary education. There has been a steady stream of findings, all available on Ako’s Knowledge Centre. Ako summarised the impact on teaching and learning of a set of their projects in this report. VET, learning challenges in tertiary education, nursing education, foundation education, literacy education, Te Tiriti in tertiary education. Mostly, grounded, practical research, of use and value for practitioners.
I have been critical of the performance of Ako in recent years and I stand by that critical assessment. Ako performed well in its early years. It may have needed improvement; maybe a different model might have helped. It didn’t need to be disestablished altogether.
And the two CoVEs commissioned wide-ranging studies on VET, many of them focused on how to lift the quality of teaching and learning, for instance, leading to research-informed good practice guides.
With the demise of Ako Aotearoa and the CoVEs, the analyst/researcher community they created is unlikely to disappear but may be diverted into other areas of interest. That creates a risk to the richness of teaching and learning research. That’s what I will miss. That’s what the system will lose.
A black box
Governments are elected to make policy decisions. That involves drawing on the advice and expertise of agencies, weighing options and making calls on spending decisions, prioritising and reprioritising as necessary. Having made an electoral commitment to restructure VET and required to work within the government’s fiscal parameters, the minister has faced tough choices. It’s her job and her right to make these cuts.
But assessing the value of spending is complex. The outcomes of professional development of instructors, of systems for lifting learner success, of research into what works in teaching and learning are hard to measure. They are revealed over a long time. They are uncertain – at the start of a project, it’s not possible to say for sure how much difference it will make, how many instructors will be influenced by the results.
Spending on supporting teaching and research into the needs of teachers and learners must be seen as an investment, but an investment with uncertain returns. Meaning the funder needs to accept at the outset that not all projects will “work” or deliver the kind of results intended. Rather, the funder needs to have confidence that the suite of projects as a whole will deliver positive returns over time.
Governments (rightly) delegate to experts the right to make decisions on the allocation of public research funding to projects and so, when they create a fund, ministers should be careful to create mechanisms that ensure that taxpayer funds are allocated in ways that align with the purpose of the appropriation. Having done so, they should stand back and allow the experts to make the calls. Government may sometimes be dissatisfied with the kinds of topics chosen for funding – but they need to trust that the system overall will deliver what the sector needs, even if the returns are not always certain at the outset.
The savings generated by these cuts represent the loss of investment in lifting teaching and learning performance across the system.
Something like $16 million has been redirected from this focus on improving teaching and learning to help pay for the new VET system. I am sure the $16 million will be well spent. But it will no longer be focused on that longer-term investment in quality. Does that represent good value? Not in my book.
Could that amount have been found elsewhere in the Vote, from low value spending? Final year fees free, for instance?[13]
Declaring my interests: I have previously undertaken work as a sub-contractor in a project funded by ConCoVE, I have acted as an independent member of a TEC panel that considered applications for Tūwhitia Accelerating Learner Success funding, and I have provided advice to the TEC on the performance of Ako Aotearoa.
Endnotes
[1] See the 31 March 2025 Cabinet paper: Funding reprioritisation to support strategically important vocational education and training
[2] See this high-level summary account of some of the projects funded under the Tūwhitia programme.
[3] Education and Training Act 2020, s267 (4) (c) and (d)
[4] This report summarises the impact on teaching and learning of a set of Ako Aotearoa projects.
[5] For one example, Katrina McChesney at the University of Waikato
[6] To give one example, Selena Chan from Ara Institute of Canterbury.
[7] For instance, Stephen Marshall, director of the academic development centre at Victoria University and Rachel Spronken-Smith, professor of higher education in the Higher Education Development Centre, University of Otago.
[8] For instance, Wen and Maani, (2023, 2022), Maani (2013, 1999, 1996), Piercy and Cochrane (2015), Boyle (2008) and Buckle and Creedy (2018)
[9] NZCER Act 1972, s13
[10] In particular, the Competent Learners longitudinal study. While this study tracks the subjects through to age 26, much of the emphasis of the research on the young adult experiences is in the linkage of the post-school experience to its foundations in school and ECE.
[11] See, for instance, this (excellent) evaluation and a series of reports on workplace learning.
[12] By my count from the roster here. Note that the government has decided to wind up the TLRI, meaning the current (2025) funding round is the last.
[13] The data is inferred from the 2023 annual report of ConCoVE, Treasury’s Estimates of Appropriations 2025/26 – Vote Tertiary Education and the 31 March 2025 Cabinet paper: Funding reprioritisation to support strategically important vocational education and training and the associated minute CAB-25-MIN-0085.
Strategy, Policy, Analysis | Tertiary Education 