News 25/5 – New TEC Chair Leaked

May 25th 2010 at 8:34am, By Dave Guerin

  1. New TEC Chair Sir Wira Gardiner will be the new TEC Chair, with Cabinet approving him last week. Trans Tasman predicted he would get the role a few weeks ago, so kudos to them. I think he’ll go quite well, although the TEC Board tends to be a lot less influential than the Minister, regardless of what legislation says. 
  2. MIT Tertiary High School …was finally opened last week and there are some nice photos and a detailed story here. Across town, Unitec will be opening their new trades facility tomorrow.
  3. Business Partnership Aoraki Polytechnic and Open Polytechnic have agreed to articulate students from Aoraki’s business diplomas to the Open Poly’s business degrees. It’s too early to be a trend, but it looks like a good idea.
  4. Keeping Safe Adrian Brown of Lincoln University is up for health and safety practitioner of the year at the annual Workplace Health and Saftey Awards.
  5. Clinical Training Otago Uni has just opened a new clinical training skills facility in Dunedin.

2 Responses to News 25/5 – New TEC Chair Leaked

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Darel

May 27th, 2010 at 10:14 am

Wira has had some big responsibilities although none appear to be related to tertiary ed. But what do you think means he will be a good TEC Chair?

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Dave Guerin

May 27th, 2010 at 11:31 am

He has had some tertiary experience as as a Crown observer on the council of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and as chair and acting chief executive of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi (was from a different source from my link above). Also, the TEC Board is stacked with tertiary education expertise, while the CEO is an ex-VC.

Most important to his likely success though, is that his work has given him a good understanding of machinery of government and governance issues.

As I noted above, the TEC Board doesn’t really set policy, but implements decisions made by the Minister. Its main role seems to be to deal with interminable reports produced by the TEC staff that someone apparently has to approve. Hopefully Sir Wira can reduce that load (as I’m sure Roy Sharp is trying to do) and maybe even recommend the abolition of the TEC Board itself, which doesn’t really seem to have much of a point, as it is neither strategic nor independent. That doesn’t mean that TEC should be rolled back into the MOE, but why have a Board without independence? Hmm, that comment expanded…

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