Building and Construction Minister Jenny Salesa has assured that today's launch of month-long, micro-credential courses will genuinely address New Zealand's 30,000 skills shortage, and is not a temporary short-cut.
Ms Salesa said the micro-credentials project has been piloted over the last year in the construction industry and is an alternative to the traditional four-year apprentice training format.
The micro-credentials courses can span four, six or 12 weeks, and train people in tasks such as framing, window installation, and other individual building skills. It can also eventually add up to a whole qualification if the student pursues it.
Ms Salesa denied the program was cutting corners in addressing the country's construction skills shortage.
"Yes, we do need fully qualified folks and we're doing that still," she told TVNZ 1's Breakfast.
"At the moment there are over 23,000 people in polytechnics who are learning in building and construction. This is actually in addition to what we have already."
"As you are aware, we have innovative ways of building at the moment. We're looking at off-site manufacturing and so there are different ways, instead of just doing bespoke buildings, which takes up to 18 months to two years.
"What we're saying is we can actually build houses in a different way."
Ms Salesa said the pilot micro-credentials program was training 150 students simultaneously, but that it could be "ramped up" to over 1000 students.
The Building and Construction Minister also clarified that overseas students are eligible to enter New Zealand and train through the micro-credentials system.
Despite 10,000 overseas working in New Zealand's building and construction sector, Ms Salesa said the long term solution to construction skills shortages "has to be that we train up our own".
"Given that when we look at the overall numbers the majority of the folks working in this industry are New Zealanders," Ms Salesa said.
"We're focused on local jobs for local folks.
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