Training & Education

For much of the past decade, the story around skilled trades has been one of decline, ageing workforces, falling apprenticeship numbers and a persistent perception among school leavers that a university degree was the only serious path to a stable career. That story is starting to shift, and the change is coming from an unexpected […]

Teachers across Aotearoa are being invited to take students on a free virtual journey through Central Otago this August, where they will learn how landslides shape the landscape — and what scientists and engineers are doing to better understand the risks. Funded by the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake, the LEARNZ field trip, On […]

New Zealand’s leading vocational education research event is marking two decades of bringing researchers, educators, employers and policymakers together, with abstract submissions and registrations now open for the 20th New Zealand Vocational Education and Training Research Forum. Co-hosted by Skills Group and BCITO, this year’s forum carries the theme Building Bridges, reflecting the idea that […]

Kiwi teens are looking into trades as AI eats into entry-level office work. Budget 2026 leant in, doubling secondary school Trades Academy places to 20,000 over four years. But the apprenticeships they’re signing up for look little like the ones their parents did. Automation has already reached the workshop floor. Take training itself. Apprentices now […]

A national programme aimed at increasing the number of women entering construction, BCITO’s Girls in Construction initiative exposes the next generation to the trades sector. Built around the idea that ‘if you can see it, you can be it’, the programme takes students out of the classroom and into active worksites and supplier yards. So […]

A new report argues that New Zealand’s senior secondary education system is still failing to provide clear, structured pathways for the majority of young people leaving school, with university remaining the dominant and most clearly defined route.   Published by Skills Group, Multiple Pathways to Success calls for a major shift in how schools, employers, […]