I welcome this blog.

I know little of Joyce, having not followed his career closely (from a far) but it nows seems likely the Education portfolio will be forever divided. That’s unfortunate since the intersection between schools and post-compulsory is where too many learners miss out.

Let’s hope he’s strong enough to withstand the inevitable pressures to simply increase the money.

Welcoming new ministers is de rigueur. Then you should mention your top priority that is likely to align with the minister’s imperatives. Extra money, per se, seems unlikely. Me, I’d focus on a policy outcome that was cost-neutral or could save money – oh, and not some mythical amount in distant future-land. I mean next budget year because this gives you an opportunity to re-litigate for this budget round.

Following up on Paul’s comment, there are plenty of good issues in the secondary – tertiary interface area worth another look. One small one might be making it easier for good trades people to become “technology” teachers.

Maryan’s approach wasn’t too bad then. I agree that ACE is gone as far as this government’s concerned so her point may be taken as political positioning, but I’d argue entirely reasonable given she is Labour.

I also think there still is money to be saved in tertiary education. So my challenge to you Dave is to name the five areas where you think money should be saved. Perhaps not because they are the biggest dollar amounts, but because they are the lowest priorities.

I’m not sure I’m convinced Paul’s point about Tertiary being a separate portfolio, either. I’ve heard the ‘loss of interface’ argument before and agree it’s a risk to be guarded against, but I don’t think it’s an inevitable consequence.

I would also argue that there are problems with having Tertiary as the (almost inevitably) poor cousin within the Education (a.k.a. Schools) portfolio. I think we saw that with the marginalised role that tertiary issues (and particularly non-university tertiary issues) had within the Ministry of Education ten years ago. I’d also very tentatively suggest that it has become a risk with NZQA now that oversight of the NCEA has become its make-or-break responsibility.

I also think the sheer breadth of the full gamut of Education (and the amount of face-time required) is beyond all but the most exceptional of ministers to manage successfully.

Moreover, we had decades of the portfolio being held in common – did that really achieve better interface than we’ve had more recently?

What do other readers think?

PS interesting challenge Darel, – maybe you could kick it off with YOUR top (bottom?) five?