|
You are subscribed as |
Unsubscribe
|
View online version
|
Forward to a friend
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Dr Michael Johnston | Senior Fellow | michael.johnston@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
|
It did not work. In fact, the goal was doomed from the outset. Far from overcoming the lower status of vocational education, NCEA locked it in. In academic subjects students can achieve higher grades of merit and excellence. Assessment for vocational education only offers one passing grade – higher grades are not possible. This, among other factors, has perpetuated the lower status of vocational education. More than 20 years later, NCEA is being abolished. It will be replaced with the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE) from 2029. Once again, improving the status of vocational education is amongst policymakers’ aims for the new qualification. NZCE will include vocational subjects, each with its own curriculum, to be written by Industry Skills Boards (ISBs). There will be eight ISBs, each responsible for managing work-based training in a broad area of industry – construction, for example. This is a very good start. Under NCEA, there were no vocational subjects, just disparate assessments of skills. Some schools have backed skills assessment with coherent programmes of learning; others have not. Having a proper curriculum for each vocational subject will help ensure they are coherent. ISBs will make sure they are relevant to industry. Many challenges remain, however. One lesson from NCEA is that academic and vocational subject results must be reported as similarly as possible. If academic subjects are reported on 100-point scales, vocational subjects should be too. If academic subjects can yield grades of A, B or C, so should vocational subjects. The hard part will be supporting schools to teach vocational subjects. They are set up to teach subjects like English, geography and science. They simply do not have enough resources to do justice to vocational subjects as well. Schools will need help to find work-integrated learning opportunities for their students. Dual enrolments at schools and polytechnics will need to become commonplace. ISBs will have to be in it for the long haul to help with these things. New Zealand desperately needs high-quality pathways for vocational education. But government agencies, tertiary institutions, industry bodies and employers will all need to step up. Schools will not be able to do it alone. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Dr Eric Crampton | Chief Economist | eric.crampton@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
|
In the Court’s view, Uber had enough control over those drivers’ businesses that they could not be considered contractors. The Court convinced itself that those drivers could not really run apps from competitors like Didi and Ola, or even DoorDash, at the same time. Uber drivers who accept at least 85 per cent of offered rides get information about the direction and duration of offered rides. The decision concluded that drivers would not risk taking a ride from another app because doing so would mean having to turn down rides offered by Uber. I wonder whether any of the justices have ever ridden in an Uber. If they had, they would know Uber drivers are undeterred by the Court’s imagined problem. The solution is obvious. Drivers taking a ride for another company simply log out of Uber while on that other ride. No rides are offered to drivers who are not logged in. It is a strange kind of employment that allows you to take on jobs for a competitor while on the clock. The Court’s ruling opens no end of messes. Most obviously, an Ipsos survey of Uber drivers shows they really value not being in a standard employment relationship. Uber is flexible. They can drive, or not, as suits their schedules. It will be impracticable to run Uber on an employment model with that kind of flexibility. Rostered shifts are far more likely. But there are more problems. Deloitte tax expert Robyn Walker wonders what Inland Revenue will do. You see, Uber drivers run their own businesses, driving for Uber and other companies. Their vehicles are business expenses – along with running costs and road user charges. They may have taken a GST credit on the car purchase. Employees cannot claim deductions for costs associated with earning income nor be GST-registered for services provided to their employer. Inland Revenue will have to decide whether drivers are employees for tax purposes and, if so, how to unwind years of now-incorrect tax filings. It risks being a terrible, terrible mess. The Select Committee is due to report back on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill just before Christmas. That Bill makes clear that platform drivers are not employees. I hope that that legislation can quickly clean up the mess that our enlightened Court has created. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Roger Partridge | Chair and Senior Fellow | roger.partridge@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
|
According to a new 60-page joint briefing from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade, the answer is simple. We need a better “mix of levers” and more “deliberate and strategic” coordination. One can easily guess who is to do the coordinating. The document, called a “Long-term Insights Briefing,” is admirable. It identifies the problem (productivity is low), studies successful countries (their productivity is high), and proposes a solution (a framework for identifying high-productivity sectors). The framework features horizontal levers and vertical levers. Strategic interventions and foundational settings. Horizontal levers are “widely agreed to be effective,” while vertical levers require “careful design.” A diagram shows how these interact with each other. It’s enough to make a McKinsey consultant weep with joy. Denmark, Finland and Ireland feature as exemplars. Our ministries have studied them carefully. Their conclusion? We need better frameworks for identifying high-value sectors. Never mind that Ireland’s approach was the opposite of strategic coordination. It was simple. Lower taxes, get out of the way, let companies come. Our ministries prefer the sophisticated approach. With consultation. It’s like being given the solution and choosing to redesign the method for finding it. Officials will use the framework to identify which sectors show promise, then coordinate resources accordingly. What could possibly go wrong? But the true genius reveals itself on page 51. After 50 pages of methodology, matrices and assessment tools designed to identify high-productivity sectors, the authors pose two questions. “Do you have any other suggestions for how government could identify high productivity sectors?” And: “Where are the opportunities?” They’ve built the machine. They’re now asking the public to tell them what it should tell them. This is accidentally honest. The knowledge required to identify productive sectors doesn’t exist in any ministry. No framework would have predicted Rocket Lab launching from Mahia Peninsula. Peter Beck had to identify the opportunity himself, then persuade the government to enable it. That’s why we have markets. Entrepreneurs try things. Many fail. A few succeed spectacularly. Prices signal where value lies. Resources flow accordingly. Of course, there is a legitimate government role in productivity: removing barriers and letting commerce work. Regrettably, better regulation is not a lever in the diagram. But don’t tell MBIE and MFAT that. You might spoil their fun. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| On The Record | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| All Things Considered | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
Unsubscribe me please |
|
Brought to you by outreachcrm |