The operating model co-design team is working with our partners EY and EY Tahi to provide a range of voices as we tackle the biggest collective challenge Te Pūkenga has this year – how to reimagine the teaching and learning of vocational education.
The co-design team will work closely and collaboratively over the next couple of months using a design-led thinking process (read more about this). From this work an initial concept of the future operating model service design will be developed. The process of including a broad co-design team ensures the very people the outcomes will impact have a core role in the thinking, testing and deciding during the process.
There are 37 co-design team members who are living across the country. They include:
16 Ākonga / learners with a range of ages and areas of interests including several recent graduates, ten sector representatives, five employers and six community and iwi representatives
A wide range of ethnicities are represented, including 19 who identify as Māori and 4 who have Pacific ethnicity
A number of participants have direct involvement with physical and learning disabilities including three with significant personal disabilities.
“We worked really hard to pull together what I consider to be a very high calibre and diverse group of people for our co-design team,” says Merran Davis, Te Pūkenga Deputy Chief Executive of Transformation and Transition and co-design project sponsor.
“Our first face-to-face wānanga in Wellington was very powerful. We spent time getting to know each other and there was a strong sense of commitment and passion amongst the group to make sure the work they do will help us to redefine vocational education in Aotearoa.”
“The second wananga focused on testing and confirming a series of opportunity statements which have emerged from the research and feedback that has been collated in recent months. This includes the in-depth research with Ākonga at the Centre which was carried out in late 2020. Opportunity statements ensure we focus on what might change to improve the experiences of learners and employers and drive the process of generating ideas.”
“The Te Pūkenga co-design model has really impressed me in its commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to all the diverse learners that start at our Polytechs,” explained one attendee. “We have been letting down too many of our Māori and diverse learners by not meeting them where they are at and how they learn. I'm excited for what we have the potential of creating now and in future-proofing this new normal. Especially as a father of two young girls and being a Māori student myself.”
The co-design team will do most of their work virtually but will meet face-to-face three more times for wānanga before the end of May 2021.
Work to re-imagine vocational education will be done with widespread input to test and confirm the design opportunities being developed. From early March the operating model project group will begin inviting people to join a reference group and contribute to the discussion via an online engagement platform.
We will be opening the opportunity up to a wide range of existing internal groups such as network staff, Board members, unions, and learners already in the system, as well as external groups such as employers, career advisors and other people involved in supporting learners, subject matter experts in education agencies, and many other community groupings.
In early March we will share more details on how you can connect and provide your views and share your experience as part of the operating model work.