Wal - an absolutely brilliant newsletter this week - it highlights the deficiencies in our training system - something we all need to be very concerned about.  Communication from the ITO around the issue of National Certificates for apprentices at MIT and Weltec (and who knows what other institutions will be brought into this) has been poor.  These young people have been waiting since August in some cases - that is now nearly 5 months.  Their careers and lives are being affected adversely and someone needs to be accountable.  I see the ITO have culled staff - well when will the CEO stand up and take responsibility for this.  It's happened under his watch and all the checks and balances obviously weren't in place.    I have heard of others who had contacted the ITO over errors in the distance learning, errors in the study guides, errors in bookings for block course and been met with a very arrogant attitude - something along the lines of they don't make mistakes and they have a huge pool of experts who go over these things etc etc - never "hey well you might have a point there - wel'll gladly look in to it."  Perhaps they need to spend more time on their core business and less checking courses for CPD points or chasing other ITO's to join up with. 

I predict the demise of the PGDR ITO within two years as it is now.  We will either see people seeing alternative ways to train apprentices that are more cost effective, or out ITO will morph into part of a giant ITO.  The government will not continue to find ineptness - and at the moment ITO's across NZ are all costing a fortune - replicating similar administrative functions.  The Ministry of Education are untaking a project looking into ITO's and one of the things they want is feeback from employers who use them.  If you are an employer you should seriously consider filling in the questionnaire on the MOE website.