This story first appeared in the May issue of DieselTalk – CLICK HERE to download the magazine FREE
Fred Dagg’s famous phrase had been coming to mind, even before the sad passing of John Clarke.
For me it came up on a visit to Lima in Peru where New Zealand and a few other countries got together to swap notes on how our countries do workplace training and apprenticeships.
Some of the countries at the summit – such as New Zealand, Canada and Britain – have longstanding systems for running apprenticehips and industry training and national qualifications systems.
Ours has been going for 25 years, in more or less its current form. Other countries at the summit had informal or fledgling systems, sometimes with government backing and sometimes with industry involvement.
In one of the workshops I met Diego, a director of a mining industry association in Chile, and he’s happy for me to quote him:
“New Zealand! There are two things I like about the New Zealand’s ITOs system – the first one, the way they concentrate convergent economic sectors into one ITO and, the second one, the involvement the ITOs have in the apprentice system.
“From others’ international experiences, the New Zealand system looks way more attached to the industry needs!”
Of course I was proud on everyone’s behalf to hear such praise from 7000km across the Pacific. Incidentally, Diego was also very happy to expound on the virtues of Martinborough pinot noir.
But why am I telling you all this? Because one week later and back at home, I went to the bank to load a PIN on a new eftpos card. The woman behind the counter must have seen something on her screen because she said “industry training… hmm… which industry?”
“I work for the organisation that represents all of the ITOs so lots of industries,” I said.
And she said: “Well, power to you because I have two nephews doing carpentry and they are loving it. I think apprenticeships are the best thing since sliced bread and they should never have gotten rid of them!”
Then a little later that week, I turned up to a farewell for a former work colleague and got talking to someone who’d worked in government circles at a fairly high level.
“Where are you working these days?” she asked and I told her the Industry Training Federation.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“We work with New Zealand’s Industry Training Organisations,” I said.
“What are those?” she asked.
So I said “Have you heard of apprenticeships?” and she replied “Yes – they got rid of those in the 90s, didn’t they?”
So there’s something of a communications challenge in this. Yes, big reforms happened in the 1990s, when the numbers of apprentices tanked during the economic downturn and as a result of economic reforms.
The Government also renamed the “apprenticeship” legislation “industry training”, using a term to cover a wider range of industries and sectors. And the apprenticeships themselves moved from a time-based system to one based on competency, which not everyone liked.
Fast forward to today. Now we have 146,000 trainees and apprentices. So not only does the system Diego admires exist, it is big.
New Zealand now has as many workplace trainees as our universities have students. That makes employers the largest provider of post-school education and quality assured qualifications.
People don’t have to know about the ITF or even ITOs but people young and old certainly should know we have a fantastic and cost-effective system for work-based learning that delivers the right skills – and respected qualifications – on the job.
That brings me to another recent conversation with a journalist who was asking about apprentices who had managed to get into the housing market.
“So when you are an apprentice, you have a job?” the journalist asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“And you get paid?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t pay fees?”
“Well, no, not as such. You might incur some costs but mostly for the tools of the trade.”
“And so you don’t have student loans?”
“No.”
It all tells me a couple of things. New Zealand has a successful and stable system for developing workforce skills that is internationally admired and even envied.
But here at home they don’t tell the schoolkids enough about it and our thousands of learners are much harder to notice since they are scattered across thousands of businesses all over the country.
It also makes it clear that the biggest reason we have a great industry training system is because New Zealand has great employers.
They work with their ITOs, invest in their people and deliver the skills to secure the future of their industries.
