The Unified Funding System

The UFS is the latest component of the significant reforms intended to create a new paradigm which some say is purely ideological. Ideological or not, the design of a new system that will likely be in place for a generation needs to be sound and built on robust assumptions. The current reforms are neither. The assumptions are unclear, untested, and lack evidence.

Assumptions

A weak assumption embedded in the early stages ossifies, leading to poor design and perverse outcomes.  This is exacerbated when parts of the system are implemented before others are decided.  A flaw in RoVE is amplified in the UFS.

1. Workers need skills; therefore learning should be skills-based.

2. We learn in order to work; therefore we should learn in work.

3. Learning skills in work is better than learning them in a classroom.

4. Work-based learning is better for everyone: learners, industries, employers, society and the country.

5. All industries are the same; all industries are skill-based.

6. Industries can be reduced to six manageable groups.

7. ‘Traditional’ on campus learning has failed to meet the needs of industry – all industries.

8. All learning will improve if on campus learning and work-based learning were treated the same; therefore they should be funded the same.

9. The two existing funding systems need to be merged into one and be a ‘Unified Funding System’.

An example

Some occupations are very proscribed, very skills-based, change very little over time and are within industries that have been served well by their ITOs.  Their transition to the new system will be barely noticeable – apart from a huge lift in funding to Te Pūkenga to deliver what was done for less by an ITO.

There are some jobs that aren’t even ‘occupations’ at all due to the changing nature of their industries.  In fact, these are not really jobs, but employment in work that utilises a range of variable skills, is barely proscribed (if at all), changes all the time and is done by curious people in flexible, fluid environments within diffuse and disconnected industries in the Creative, Business and ICT sectors.  Ironically, the very sectors hyped as being the Future of Work and key to the country’s economic salvation.

These sectors have not had an ITO model in the past, and did not receive or direct any funding to industry based training.  They have been shoe-horned into WDCs which are struggling within the criteria of RoVE to identify the industries, consult with them and create work-based learning programmes that can be funded, at the expense of current campus-based programmes that meet industry needs.  To date there is no evidence of the creation of new industry-based schemes for these sectors.

The likely scenario is that funding will move out of campus-based learning (mostly private providers) into work-based learning (for programmes that don’t exist, that industry doesn’t want) and will be redeployed way from the Creative, Business and ICT sectors to fund work-based learning in other sectors.