Vocational Education Penny Simmonds says staff to student ratios at polytechnics abysmal

RNZ News

17-06-2025

Vocational education minister Penny Simmonds.
Photo:
RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds says the staff to student ratios have been abysmal.
Appearing before the Education and Workforce Select Committee to answer questions about the government's Budget decisions for Tertiary Education, Simmonds said institutions' ratio of staff to students was critical for their viability.
She said polytechnics had reduced their staff numbers by 8.2 percent on a headcount basis and about 4.9 percent on a full-time equivalent basis but their staff to student ratios were still lower than they were in 2016-17.
"Those ratios are critical to the viability of an institution. If you're running at a ratio of less than one to 18 for academic staff to students, you are in financial trouble and they are low," she said.
Simmonds said a number of polytechnics were "incredibly damaged by the last four or five years under Te Pūkenga".
She said they had lost domestic enrolments, failed to rebuild international enrolments quickly, and had not responded quickly to changes.
Simmonds said Te Pūkenga should have addressed staff surpluses at loss-making polytechnics more quickly.
She said it had not become financially sustainable, even though it recorded a financial surplus last year.
Simmonds and Universities Minister Shane Reti insisted government funding for tertiary education was increasing as a result of the Budget.
Committee member and Labour Party MP Shanan Halbert said Budget figures showed total tertiary funding would drop $124m in the 2025/26 financial year to $3.79b.
Tertiary Education Commission officials said the drop was due to the end of the previous government's temporary, two-year funding boost and moving the fees free policy to the final year of students' study.
Simmonds said the government ended equity funding for Māori and Pacific students because it wanted to target extra funding to needs not ethnicity.
She said if a Māori student who was dux of their school enrolled in a polytechnic qualification, their enrolment would attract the equity weighting, even though they had no need of additional support, which she said did not make sense.
Tertiary Education Commission chief executive Tim Fowler told the committee enrolments had grown so much that institutions were asking for permission to enrol more students this year than they had agreed with the commission in the investment plans that determined their funding.
"We've had most of the universities come to us and ask to exceed their investment plan allocation... over 105 percent this year. In previous years, I think we might have had one in the past decade, so unprecedented levels of enrolments," he said.
Fowler said it was the commission's job to balance that growth, favouring government priorities such as STEM subject enrolments and removing funding from under-enrolled courses.
"We're continually adjusting in-flight what that investment looks like and where we see areas where there is demand that we want to support we try and move money to it. Where there's areas of under-delivery, we try and take that out as quickly as we possibly can so it doesn't fly back to the centre - we want to reinvest it elsewhere," he said.
"The challenge for us this year, there are far fewer areas of under-delivery than there is over-delivery."
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