New Centres of Vocational Excellence announced

New Centres of Vocational Excellence announced

Last updated 15 September 2020
Last updated 15 September 2020

On 3 September the Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced that two successful groups have been confirmed to establish the first two Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) – a Primary Sector CoVE and a Construction CoVE.

CoVEs are a fundamental part of the new vocational education system and particularly important in helping to build resilience in a COVID-19 environment.

At the announcement at Manukau Institute of Technology in Auckland, Minister Hipkins reiterated that the CoVEs are industry and education-led.

“They bring together industry, researchers, tertiary providers, iwi, and other groups from across the country to work on the specific issues and opportunities each sector has identified, and develop solutions for training and education,” he said.

Primary Sector CoVE

The key areas of focus are:

  • Attracting and retaining learners and staff - from school to vocational education, to higher learning, and to and in the workforce.
  • Defining vocational excellence - explore and identify excellence in food and fibre vocational education, locally and internationally, focussed on learner and employer success and satisfaction.
  • Specialised projects – test and embed new ideas, innovations and specialised opportunities from across the regions and sectors.

Construction CoVE

The key areas of focus are:

  • Disruptions – prepare the sector to manage future disruptions (for example, new technologies) through identifying these disruptions and developing training solutions
  • Entry – fundamentally reform entry level training by decreasing the time it takes for workers to be engaged in meaningful paid employment.
  • Productivity – improve retention and productivity by developing an end to end career support service and linking it with career stage appropriate training, mentoring and networking.
  • Diversity – provide tested solutions and opportunities to strengthen and diversify the construction sector workforce, particularly by increasing the number of Māori, Pacific people, and women in hands-on roles.
  • Sustainability – respond to the increasing demand for environmentally sustainable practices by incorporating sustainability into appropriate training.

Te Pūkenga welcomes the first two COVES

Te Pūkenga welcomed the launch of the construction and primary sector Centres of Vocational Excellence (COVEs).

“We are very excited to be hosting and supporting the consortia partnerships for the first of what we hope will be a number of CoVEs at Te Pūkenga,” says Te Pūkenga’s CE Stephen Town.

“The Food and Fibre CoVE, hosted at our subsidiary EIT, and the construction sector CoVE, hosted at Te Pūkenga subsidiary MIT, will tangibly demonstrate the impact we can have by strengthening links between skills and training, industry and community and most importantly, learners. This is another key step towards reforming vocational education.”