This post follows up from posts on wananga, university and OTEP over-delivery in 2009 over the last three 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.

Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) mostly operated within the 97-103% range last year. Six were under the cap, which is surprising since some of them were claiming last year that their enrolments were booming and they would go over 103%. Actually, it’s very surprising, since most people affected by the recession had lower level qualifications and were a natural fit to upgrade at ITPs. None of the six ITPs below the cap are low enough to need to hand funding back. Nine ITPs were in the 100-103% range, with five above the cap. Only three ITPs were significantly over the cap – SIT, NMIT and Tairawhiti.

Overall, ITPs enrolled an average of 101.3% of their cap in the middle of a recession when they might be expected to enrol some extra students at marginal cost – that compares to 107.4% at OTEPS, 100.1% at wananga and 103.1% at universities. While I was wondering before whether ITPs would respect government pressure to keep below the cap, the level that most are below the cap suggests that they have restrained enrolments for their own reasons. And they do have enough reasons, with much tighter finances next year meaning they need to conserve their resources. The allocation decisions within ITPs will probably be interesting and I might have a look at shifts in subjects and levels of EFTS in the future.

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