Taxpayer money 'wasted' on training

Tertiary Minister Steven Joyce. Photo / APN

A large proportion of $58 million in taxpayers' money was wasted on industry training that failed to yield any qualifications in 2009, Tertiary Minister Steven Joyce has revealed.

Some of the waste was on funding for "phantom trainees", or trainees signed up but not actually training.

In 2009, the Government gave industry training organisations (ITOs) $163 million, which means 36 per cent was effectively spent on nothing.

"There was $57.8 million given to ITO funding in 2009," Mr Joyce told the education and science select committee yesterday.

"This amount of money was paid over to ITOs to people who were supposed to be in training who achieved no credits over that period.

"There's tens of thousands of trainees who have been in the system for one or two years [with] no credits against their name ... People are just claiming funding and nothing much is happening."

The figure is being disputed by the Industry Training Federation - though it accepts there needs to be improvement - as some credits are recorded the following year.

Mr Joyce later told the Herald that it was a stretch to say all of the $58 million was lost, "but a significant amount of that money is wasted".

In 2009, 54 per cent of the 185,286 industry trainees achieved no credits. In 2008, 53 per cent of 182,760 trainees achieved no credit.

This compares with the 22 per cent of enrolled students at institutes of technology and polytechnics who failed to achieve credits in 2009, which improved to 20 per cent in 2010.

Mr Joyce said ITOs had also focused too much on enrolling trainees instead of training them.

INDUSTRY TRAINING

2009: 54 per cent of industry trainees achieved no credits.

2008: 53 per cent achieved no credits.

Institutes of technology or polytechnics:

2010: 20 per cent achieved no credits.

2009: 23 per cent achieved no credits.