• Finding Out Where School Leavers Go
• Nation Building And The Role Of Tertiary Education
• Children's Day Highlights Child Protection Challenges
• Care Sector Blueprint
• TEAC Funding Report Release
• Youth Justice Site Identified
• Bills Before Select Committee
• Are You Sorted?
• The Third Way, By Steve Maharey

FINDING OUT WHERE SCHOOL LEAVERS GO
A new pilot programme launched last week aims to answer the questions, 'where do young people go when they leave school, and which ones need support to ensure that they get access to further education, training, or a job'. The Destinations and Tracking Pilot will track school leavers in Christchurch and Porirua. It is being jointly coordinated by Skill New Zealand and Career Services.

Associate Education (Tertiary Education) Minister Steve Maharey formally launched the pilot programmes at a ceremony in Porirua. In Porirua over 900 senior students from the four local secondary schools will be asked about their plans for next year. A further 1,700 students will be surveyed from eight Christchurch secondary schools. CareerPoint (Career Services' career information and advice freephone service) will follow up with the students next year to ask them what they actually did and provide targeted career information and advice.

Helping young people make successful transitions in their lives from schooling, into the worlds of further education and employment is hampered by a lack of information about their aspirations and the barriers to achievement they perceive. The destinations and tracking pilot programme will help government agencies to 'get to know' young people better so that they intervene positively in their lives at the earliest opportunity.

Household Labour Force Survey results for June show that over 15 percent of people aged 15 to 19 are unemployed. Around 6,000 young people identified themselves as 'actively seeking work' but still at school. Given that overall, unemployment has dropped to its lowest point since 1998, these figures are particular cause for concern. The pilots hope to close the information void on the barriers holding young people back so that more active support policies can be put in place.

The pilot programmes have been developed in partnership with the Mayors' Taskforce for Jobs. Results from this project will be used in schools to enhance career education and will help to identify new ways to assist young people to move into work or further training. A report on the pilot project is due in June 2002 and consideration will be given to a nationwide expansion once this evaluation has been received.

NATION BUILDING AND THE ROLE OF TERTIARY EDUCATION
New Zealand's tertiary education system lost its way in the 1990s and needs refocusing to effectively respond to changing economic and social needs, Steve Maharey argues in his Third Way column included with this issue of Maharey Notes.

CHILDREN'S DAY HIGHLIGHTS CHILD PROTECTION CHALLENGES
Children's Day 2001 celebrated yesterday (Sunday, October 28) highlights significant child protection challenges for New Zealanders according to Social Services and Employment Minister Steve Maharey.

Speaking at a pre-Children's Day picnic attended by Prime Minister Helen Clark at Parliament last Wednesday, Steve Maharey said the main aim of Sunday's national event was that children should be celebrated, nurtured and treasured by all. However he noted that there had been high-profile cases of child abuse in recent years, along with many other cases that had not come to public attention.

Investing in children now pays dividends for the future of us all. However, tragically too many young New Zealanders are missing out on getting the love and support they should be able to expect as a basic human right. New Zealanders face a series of challenges:

• to strengthen our cultural and our societal beliefs and the way we practice them to underpin child safety and well-being;
• to foster a sense in our communities that everyone is responsible and has a part to play in child protection and making our children's lives happy; and,
• to build community and social networks that make for environments where child abuse is less able to exist.

Steve Maharey attended a Children's Day celebration at the Lower North Youth Justice Centre in Palmerston North (bravely) judging a children's art competition.

CARE SECTOR BLUEPRINT
Work continues to produce a blueprint to guide the future development of the whole care and protection sector. The Government's commitment to developing the blueprint was signalled as an initial response to Mick Brown's review of Child, Youth and Family. He saw that if children at risk were to have a service totally focussed on their needs, the sector itself needed to have a common vision, and a strategy to get there.

The blueprint will provide a sound basis for long-term development of care and protection services, making clearer the lines between government and private sector provision and delivery of services.

A group of key people from the care and protection sector who bring a wide range of experience, backgrounds and perspectives to the task have asked to help develop the blueprint. This group are:

• Ian Calder (Barnardos);
• Buster Curson (practice consultant and ex-President of the New Zealand Aotearoa Association of Social Workers);
• Donna Mataheare-Atariki (Ngai Tahu Development Corporation);
• Rev Alfred Ngaro (Tamaki Family Ministries);
• Sean Robinson (Wesley Wellington Mission); and,
• Alison Thom (Te Runanga A Iwi O Ngapuhi).

The range of Government agencies with an interest in children's safety, wellbeing and development are also involved in the project. The project is being lead, by the Ministry of Social Development.

Several regional discussion forums have already been held to help identify what the key elements of an effective care and protection sector are, what barriers need to be addressed and what strengths and opportunities can be built on.

A report to Government on the blueprint is expected by the end of the year.

TEAC FUNDING REPORT RELEASE
The fourth and final report of the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission will be released by the Commission next Wednesday (November 7). The report proposes a new funding framework to complement other changes being made to refocus New Zealand's entire tertiary education system.

visit TEAC on-line at www.teac.govt.nz

YOUTH JUSTICE SITE IDENTIFIED
A working group of Canterbury political and community representatives is proposing crown-owned rural land between Burnham and Rolleston as the site for Child, Youth and Family's new Christchurch-based youth justice residence. A new youth justice residence is needed in the South Island because the existing youth justice facility at Kingslea in Burwood, Christchurch is no longer suitable.

The new facility will provide a purpose-built residence for up to 40 young people generally aged between 14 and 17 in Child, Youth and Family's care. Consultation with local residents is now underway on the proposal.

BILLS BEFORE SELECT COMMITTEE
Submissions on the Social Workers Registration Bill and the Commissioner for Children Bill close with Parliament's Social Services Select Committee on 19 November. * copies of both bills are available from Bennett's bookshops and the full text of the Social Workers Registration Bill has been posted to Steve Maharey's website at www.executive.govt.nz/minister/ maharey/registration/

ARE YOU SORTED?
More than 55,000 hits have been recorded on the Retirement Commissioner's Sorted website. The site was launched in September and signals an increased scope for the Retirement Commissioner from a focus on retirement planning to lifetime financial planning. International research has shown a clear link between financial education in early life and financial well-being in retirement.

Sorted is centred around a website, covering goal setting, managing debt, investment and retirement. Special sections look at financial planning at work and financial skills education for young people. A series of publications called Sorted Offline will be available in public libraries from November for those who do not have internet access.

* to get yourself Sorted visit www.sorted.org.nz

THE THIRD WAY, BY STEVE MAHAREY
NATION BUILDING, SPECIALISATION AND TERTIARY EDUCATION

During the 1990s, New Zealand came close to losing its distinct, nation building tertiary education system.

In the face of globalisation National appeared to give away any notion of difference, identity, specialization and nationhood. Instead we were encouraged to look forward to becoming just another outlet in the global education marketplace.

This vision, as National now acknowledges, was a misunderstanding of the implications of globalisation.

It may well be that we live in a world where national boundaries count for little, but government and identity still matter. It is still within the nation that social programs like education are provided and that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

The reasoning is simple. Who else is going to ensure that New Zealanders have the skills, knowledge and research base to prosper in the demanding world of the 21st century? Other nations may well see us as paying customers, but they are unlikely to see it as their responsibility to develop the capability of New Zealanders.

It is also true that in a world where those who can pay will pick and choose from the best educational systems available, we will need to have something distinctive to offer if we are to win a share of the global market in students and research.

None of this means cutting off our education system from the world. On the contrary, our institutions should be confidently seeking out relationships around the world. We need exchanges between staff and students. Joint ventures in research and development should be established. Our system needs to be benchmarked against the best in the world.

As we work towards being a key player in the globalising tertiary education system, better progress will be made if we are clear about the need to build something that is distinctively New Zealand. Our education system should reflect what we are about as a nation.

This is crucial because, as we react to global developments, we will only be in a position to shape what goes on if we have a strong independent education system. It is through education that we will define our own future.

We need, therefore, to be able to produce new and distinct programs of teaching and research; something genuinely new and different which students and researchers cannot get from anywhere else.

Some tertiary systems in the world already have a sense of distinction. The USA stands for business education, science and technology. Germany is strong in science and technology. The UK is known for finance and in history and culture. France is strong in humanities.

The question is, what does the New Zealand tertiary system stand for? Without carving out areas of specialization where we are world leaders our system cannot hope to rank with the truly top rated institutions.

It is in this area that National's market-based education policies really let the nation down. Institutions were encouraged to develop their own strategic plan without any sense of what they might do to contribute to national development. It took a decade for the lesson to be driven home that New Zealand needs its institutions to work together to advance our shared interests if we are to thrive. Alone, our institutions can only achieve a fraction of what they can do together.

New Zealand cannot afford to have all of its institutions behaving as if they could be located anywhere. They need to be committed to a strategy that reflects our aspirations for the future.

The lessons we have learned mean we must play to our strengths. To this end, our tertiary education system should have the following key features.

First, we should strive to provide excellent education. This will mean nurturing the kind of environment where teaching, learning and research is valued for its own sake. Nothing else will be possible if we do not ensure quality.

Secondly, we need programs that reflect the drive to build a knowledge nation. Specifically, we need to focus on areas like information technology, literacy and numeracy, research and innovation and lifting industry skills. Lifelong learning has to be a practical option.

The third is that we need to specialize in those areas that make us distinct. This is perhaps the most challenging aspect of building our system because it smacks of "picking winners". But that is exactly what we have to do.

We do this as follows.

• Establish a national tertiary education strategy and "scoreboard" through consultation with all stakeholders and produce a 3-5 year strategy.

• Ensure all institutions and providers clearly mark out the contribution they will make to national development.

• Establish a funding model which encourages institutions to be outward looking and responsive to all stakeholders.

• Invest in areas that have been identified as New Zealand's strongest. To take the most obvious example, New Zealand is a biological economy. Our future rests heavily on our ability to blend our old commodity-producing biologically-based industries with the features of the new economy. Our investment in education and research must reflect these areas of strength and potential.

We might also think about areas like health, tourism, earthquakes, technology application and race relations as areas where New Zealand has specific expertise.

Whatever we do we need to make choices. We can be excellent at everything, but we can world leaders only in those areas in which we specialize. If we do not build areas of specialization, we will be reduced to reacting to the agendas of other nations rather that shaping our own future.

It is not a question of global versus national interests but a combination of both. To opt out of globalisation is not an option. Equally to lose confidence in ourselves as a distinct nation is not an option. Our tertiary system needs to move forward proud of what it can offer both to New Zealanders and the world.