This post follows up from posts on wananga and university over-delivery in 2009 over the last two days – the university post explains the context. The short version is that providers are supposed to be in the 97-103% range, if 100% is their funding allocation

So, what’s an OTEP? Well, it’s an Other Tertiary Education Provider, which really means that it’s an organisation that doesn’t easily fit in the box, so  that the government either gives it a different or a better funding deal than those that fit in neat boxes. Here’s some context on each:

• the NZ School of Drama is a private training establishment that gets more  funding for drama courses than any public institution, but that’s because it has been designated as a national centre for drama training since it was founded;
• Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre is a PTE but gets funded like a public institution, but it is actually established by an Act (it was set up to train WW1 returned servicemen) and was originally funded by the Ministry of Agriculture;
• The Playcentre Federation, Childcare Assn and Te Kohanga Reo Trust had historic funding allocations for training through the MOE for their early childhood education work;
• Literacy Aotearoa also had historic funding through the MOE; and
• The Institute of Professional Legal Studies is, curiously, the only one that is completely private sector but also had a historic funding arrangement (given there are lawyers involved, I might write up a separate post about that one day).

So, how did they do in 2009? IPLS performed very poorly and will probably have to give a lot of money back, but 2 OTEPs were just over 100%. Four OTEPs were well over the 103% limit, all in the high-demand early childhood education and literacy areas. It will be interesting to see if anything happens there. I say that because OTEPs and PTEs often have quite high over-delivery and the management of it has not been such a major concern for the TEC. Up until 2008 all places at tertiary education institutions were funded, but PTEs had many unfunded places – I imagine some OTEPs may have been in the same position, or have been allowed to expand unfunded enrolments in the last two years.

Tomorrow we’ll cover ITPs. Over/Under Delivery percentage is derived from data supplied by the TEC.