12. Question No. 12—EducationDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 12—Education 12. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by all his statements policies and actions around the Reform of Vocational Education?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes in the context in which they were made.Dr Shane Reti: Does the Tertiary Education Commission programme business case state that the risk of the new model not achieving desired outcomes is likely?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The business case sets out all of the risks that the officials considered in preparing the business case. It then sets out the inherent risks and then the managed risks effectively and what the business case does then is it goes through and identifies how the risks profile changes once the mitigation strategies are put in place. So for example the inherent risk of unmet needs of industry moves from being almost certain down to possible the inherent risk of not achieving outcomes moves from being likely to being unlikely and the inherent risk of workforce disruption and reduced participation moves from almost certain to likely. That has to be weighed of course against the status quo where many of those risks also exist.Dr Shane Reti: Does the programme business case state that there will be a decline in students apprentices and trainees (up to a total of around 18000 learners) as a result of the reform programme"?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Business cases of course cover all likely scenarios or as many likely scenarios as can possibly be envisaged. I would point out that participation in vocational education and training has been trending down for about five years since before this Government took office.Dr Shane Reti: Did Treasury and the Ministry of Education review the regulatory impact assessment and state "the panel does not find the RIA fully convincing"?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In fact I think they were involved in writing it. Dr Shane Reti: Does the programme business case include the base case mergers of Unitec and Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT); Whitireia and WelTec; and NorthTec Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki (WITT) and Te Tai Poutini?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I'm sorry can the member repeat the question?Dr Shane Reti: Does the programme business case include the base case mergers of Unitec and MIT; Whitireia and WelTec; and NorthTec WITT and Te Tai Poutini?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think as I said to the member in one of my earlier answers the business case canvasses a wide range of possibilities—those being among them. The ultimate one that the Government settled on was the establishment of one institute of skills and technology to cover all of the existing 16 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand.Dr Shane Reti: Does the programme business case predict the loss of 2310 apprentices each year in the short and medium term?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I said the business case canvasses a range of possible scenarios. That is one of the possible scenarios. I point out the fact that we currently are not meeting the skill needs of business already. We have been losing people from vocational education and training for about five years and we could not guarantee that that wouldn't continue even if we weren't making these changes."