New Zealand’s Vocational Education System: Lifelong Learning – Where is the Strategy?

Throughout this series, I’ve examined New Zealand’s vocational education reforms and the new Tertiary Education Strategy that frames them. In this sixth article, I address what’s perhaps the most glaring omission: a coherent approach to lifelong learning.

Two Mentions, No Strategy

The Tertiary Education Strategy 2025-2030 mentioned lifelong learning only twice. The first acknowledges growing demand from students for lifelong learning options. The second states that providers are expected to “adapt delivery models to support lifelong learning, including through work-based, online, modular and work-integrated learning options.”

This is not a strategy. It’s an aspiration without architecture.

The irony is that New Zealand actually has some building blocks in place that with a few edits, could work brilliantly. Our qualifications framework includes unit standards and skills standards, discrete learning outcomes that can be taught independently, as well as micro-credentials (1-40 credits) that can stack towards larger qualifications. Some work is needed by NZQA to understand the difference between a skill standard and a micro-credential, but it’s something. New Zealand also has a Record of Achievement System. The system “is an official transcript of all the New Zealand qualifications, microcredentials and standards…achieved, as reported by NZQA-consented education providers and universities”. In research I had published several months ago, I proposed taking this system, expanding it and allowing it to be a system that learners can use for stacking and getting to undertake their lifelong learning journey using a system of recognition across all education providers in New Zealand, recognised and trusted by employers.

So we have modularity. We have flexibility. We have recognition systems. What we lack is cohesion, coordination, and commitment.

The International Context

Internationally, lifelong learning has moved from policy flourish to economic necessity.

Singapore’s SkillsFuture initiative provides all citizens with training credits and a comprehensive course catalogue of nearly 28,000 offerings. Finland established a Service Centre for Continuous Learning and Employment in 2023 to analyse competence needs and coordinate services, an approach the European Central Bank praised as exemplary.

Ireland’s micro-qualifications system offers short, stackable, accredited programmes for working adults, heavily subsidised with flexible delivery. Spain restructured its entire vocational framework in 2022 to create modular pathways from micro-credentials through to full qualifications, making all training “accreditable, cumulative, and capitalisable.”

These systems didn’t emerge organically. They required policy frameworks, institutional infrastructure, funding mechanisms, and public awareness campaigns. They required governments deciding lifelong learning mattered enough to build actual systems supporting it.

The Missing Infrastructure

Based on international evidence, what would a genuine lifelong learning strategy require?

A national coordination body analysing labour market needs, funding appropriate training, and providing guidance services. Finland’s SECLE provides the model. New Zealand has no equivalent, TEC funds provision and NZQA maintains the framework, but no body ensures coherent lifelong learning pathways exist.

Integrated information systems showing all available courses with transparent information on costs, funding, duration, and delivery modes. Singapore’s MySkillsFuture platform does this. New Zealand’s NZQA register lists qualifications but provides limited information on actual delivery.

Stackability and recognition frameworks enabling learners to accumulate credits towards qualifications over extended periods. New Zealand does allow stacking within its micro-credentials and some qualifications, however the ability to do this seamlessly, especially between providers is still early days. Stacking seamlessly between vocational and higher or higher and adult – a true holistic lifelong learning education system, doesn’t exist yet.

Funding mechanisms for adult learners. Many international systems recognise that expecting working adults to pay high costs creates insurmountable barriers. There are policies in New Zealand to support new learners, but a lot less for adult learning. Many, if not all people will need to upskill or reskill, potentially find new areas to work in as some current job roles won’t exist in the future. Ensuring more flexibility in the funding system, even just improving the ability to utilise student loans and student allowances in shorter pieces of education, could be game changers.

The 2026 Opportunity, Or Missed Opportunity

Here’s the irony: New Zealand is implementing yet another major vocational reform. We’re creating eight Industry Skills Boards, re-establishing regional polytechnics, developing new provider networks. This massive disruption represents either a catastrophic waste if we recreate old problems in new structures, or a genuine opportunity to build something better.

If, and it’s a big if, the Government, TEC, NZQA, and ISBs chose to make lifelong learning a priority, the 2026 reset could incorporate modular programme design as standard practice, enhanced NZQA functionality storing all learning outcomes, transparent course catalogues, systematic recognition of prior learning, and a stronger push to build better connections between all types of learning.

The infrastructure changes needed aren’t radical. The framework exists. What’s required is will: political will to fund it properly, institutional will to collaborate rather than compete, and strategic will to design for learner needs rather than organisational convenience.

The Cost of Inaction

Without a coherent lifelong learning strategy, predictable consequences follow:

Workforce skills mismatches will persist. The TES identifies that employers report graduates lacking job-ready capabilities, but without accessible upskilling pathways, skills gaps will only widen.

Regional inequalities will deepen. As polytechnics focus on financial viability, regional centres will see reduced provision unless online and distance learning is strategically developed.

Economic productivity will lag. The strategy’s focus on economic growth rings hollow without investment in the continuous skill development that productivity requires.

Equity gaps will remain entrenched. The most disadvantaged learners need flexible, affordable learning opportunities. Without deliberate system design supporting them, the TES’s equity commitments remain aspirational.

The Political Reality

New Zealand’s next election will likely be September or October 2026. The next 12 months therefore, represent a critical window. Will this Government, having disrupted vocational education after arguing against the first restructure (ROVE) whilst in opposition, invest in building coherent lifelong learning infrastructure?

The building blocks exist. The international evidence is clear. The policy challenge isn’t that technical, it’s political. It requires someone in government deciding lifelong learning is not just a nice phrase for strategy documents, but a priority worthy of actual resources, coordination, and commitment.

Until that happens, New Zealand’s approach to lifelong learning will remain what it is today: an aspiration without architecture, a need without a strategy, and an opportunity systematically squandered.

By Stuart G A Martin, Founder of George Angus Consulting.

Here is a tag page for all of the articles in Stuart’s series on New Zealand