Assessing Plans and approving funding
In assessing proposed Plans and determining funding to support tertiary education activities, the TEC will consider their individual and aggregate contribution to the TES. The TES operates at a national level by setting goals and measures, and priorities for the tertiary education system as whole.
The TEC assesses proposed Plans and makes decisions about funding using the prescribed and gazetted decision-making criteria.
The decision-making criteria emphasise the importance of performance commitments that contribute towards achieving the TES priorities, responding to the needs of learners, communities, industry and employers, and an organisation’s ability to deliver its proposed Plan.
In making decisions about funding approval, the TEC will use a range of evidence including the information contained in the proposed Plan, monitoring information, Plan engagement (where applicable) and both national and regional demographic and economic data.
Where a proposed Plan meets the prescribed criteria, the TEC may decide to fund all or some of the programmes and activities described in the Plan.
Funding approved for a Plan will begin from 1 January 2012.
Developing a Plan
Developing a Plan is the individual responsibility of each TEO. To assist this process, the TEC will provide performance information to all TEOs.
PTEs and community providers will be primarily supported through online information and tools (ESAA Workspaces) with direct help available from the TEC Service Centre.
TEC Investment Managers will work with each TEI and ITO, discussing their performance and the factors and groups that they intend to respond to in their Plans.
A Plan is both an accountability and a contractual document that sets out what a TEO will deliver in return for the money invested by Government. A Plan provides a summary of TEO’s activities and how these link to Government priorities and the needs of learners, employers, industries, communities and iwi and how the success of the activities will be measured.
Plans reflect both TEO’s own individual processes, including consultation with their stakeholders, and the Government’s overall goals and priorities for the tertiary education system as set out in the Tertiary Education Strategy. TEOs will need to take into account the TES and its priorities and the 2011-13 planning environment when developing a proposed Plan.
A proposed Plan must be prepared in consultation with the stakeholders that the organisation considers ought to be consulted.
For larger TEOs, the Plan will be a subset of their wider planning and accountability documents.
Universities, Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics
The TEC and tertiary education institutions TEIs have together prepared an outcomes-framework for each of the universities, institutes of technology and polytechnics (ITPs) and wananga. These outcomes-frameworks allow TEIs to meet their legislative Plan and accountability requirements on outcomes.
What does a Plan need to explain?
Proposed Plans should demonstrate a commitment to achieving high performance through continuously improving the quality of provision and outcomes for learners.
Proposed Plans must meet the prescribed Plan content requirements. In doing so, proposed Plans should explain how TEOs:
- ensure provision is relevant to the needs of their learners, communities, industry and business
- contribute to the relevant TES priorities
- will maintain or improve their educational performance
- will improve their organisational efficiency.
Proposed Plans must demonstrate that TEOs’ provision is well aligned with their current performance, capability, and areas of expertise and with the TES priorities that are most important for them. These priorities will depend on their mission and role, as well as the needs of their learners, communities, industry and employers.
Plans should reflect a three-year planning horizon. In developing proposed Plans, TEOs are expected to:
- Identify the factors and groups they will respond to through their Plans
- Demonstrate that their proposed delivery is consistent with their core roles, the needs of their learners, communities, industries and employers
- Explain how they will contribute to the TES priorities for younger learners, Māori, and Pacific peoples and the improvement of literacy, numeracy, and skills outcomes
- Identify the areas of educational and financial performance on which they will focus to address these factors and meet the needs of these groups
- Demonstrate how they will maintain and improve their overall educational and financial performance
- Set robust commitments against common educational performance indicators
- Make any changes through re-prioritisation of current resources, rather than any anticipated growth in Government funding.
The sections of the Plan
The prescribed content of organisations’ proposed Plans requires them to contain the following three sections:
- Plan Context
- Summary of Activity
- Performance Commitments.
The Plan Context, Summary of Activity, and Performance Commitments must be consistent. What is proposed in the Summary of Activity should be clearly informed by the organisation’s response to the TES priorities, its own mission and role, and the needs of learners, communities, industry and employers, as described in the Plan context. The Performance commitments section will set out the commitments and associated indicators that allow performance to be measured and improved.
Plans are expected to be evidenced-based. However, the use of the word ‘evidence’ in the criteria for assessing proposed Plans does not mean all this information should be included in the Plan content. Where the evidence is not part of the Plan content, it should be referenced in the Plan
Setting performance commitments
Proposed Plans are required to contain commitments that relate to inputs, such as the proposed mix of provision, research, and other activities, and also to educational and operational outputs. Proposed Plans need to explain how delivering on these commitments will meet the needs of learners and other stakeholders that the TEO intends to reach.
A proposed Plan should demonstrate how a TEO is committing to improve its performance by responding to the needs of learners, communities, industry, employers, the TES priorities, and its past performance.
Proposed Plans must include performance commitments that set out:
- what they will deliver, through the mix of provision, research, and other activities
- what will be achieved, through educational performance commitments related to the TES priorities
- how this achievement will be measured, using the common educational performance indicators
- the steps they intend to take to maintain and improve their educational, management, and governance performance.
Educational performance commitments must be able to be measured using the TEC-defined educational performance indicators.
TEIs’ performance commitments must be consistent with the Office of the Auditor General’s (OAG) requirements for annual reporting. The OAG requires TEIs to use their annual Statement of Service Performance (SSP) to report on all the commitments that are included in their proposed Plans.
The sector-specific Outcomes Frameworks will support the development of appropriate performance commitments that meet OAG requirements.
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Last changed:
25 May 2011