Creative, digital sectors ‘sidelined’ in vocational education reform
Wednesday, 30 April 2025
Advocates for the country’s creative arts and digital technology industries say the Government is sidelining the fast-growing, productive and high-value sectors in its reform of vocational education.
Last week Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds announced a suite of changes so that industries have more influence over how they train apprentices and trainees.
As part of that, from January 2026, seven new industry skills boards will be established to cover the automotive, construction, infrastructure, food and fibre, service, manufacturing and technology, and social and community industries.
The boards will replace six workforce development councils ‒ responsible for setting standards, developing qualifications and helping to shape vocational education curriculum.
Despite the high productivity of the creative arts and digital technology sectors, those industries are instead proposed to have their qualifications and standards developed by the NZ Qualifications Authority, versus having a dedicated skills board.
The difference in having a dedicated skills board is programme endorsement, strategic workforce planning and investment advice, on top of the setting of standards.
Claire Robinson, chief executive of Toi Mai, the workforce development council responsible for the creative arts and digital tech sectors, said all its 43 fulltime equivalent roles would be disestablished by the end of 2025 under the proposal, including her own.
While some of the workers may be employed by new skills boards, this was not confirmed.
Robinson said because the creative arts and digital tech sectors did not have traditional apprenticeships, they were being treated as “problem children” and relegated to the Qualifications Authority.
“It just seems very retrograde,” Robinson said, adding the sectors opened pathways for Aotearoa to diversify its economy away from its primary industries.
Toi Mai was being “carved up” despite it covering 22,000 learners across 159 qualifications, Robinson said. This compared with the automotive industry, which covers about 13,500 learners in about 30 qualifications, and is getting its own skills board.
Toi Mai had established relationships with the creative arts and digital tech industries since 2021, which would be lost under the proposal.
This year the Government released its long-awaited proposed national creative sector strategy. It emphasised economic diversification as a way towards a more prosperous, ambitious future outside legacy industries.
Robinson said creative arts and digital tech vocational education needed to be given more attention, not less. “There is no strategy. … We’re going to get left behind.”
Gaming development had a productivity level per head almost triple that of agriculture and double that of the more general IT sector, Robinson said, adding it was a no-brainer to invest in those areas.
Under the proposal no group would be thinking strategically about how to grow the creative arts and digital tech sectors other than the Qualifications Authority, which already managed the assessment system for secondary schools and independently checked the quality of tertiary education providers, except universities.
The proposal would choke off industries New Zealand needed to drive future productivity, innovation and growth, said Paula Browning, chairperson of WeCreate, the alliance of New Zealand's creative industries.
“We’re already losing skilled workers offshore. Now we’re about to lose the ability to build the next generation here at home.”
While the creative and digital tech industries have been working to develop new forms of work-based learning ‒ including cadetships, internships and apprenticeship-style pathways ‒ without recognition and investment, those pathways could stall, Browning said.
People can provide feedback on the proposed changes to May 20 via the Tertiary Education Commission’s website.