Aoraki to keep life skills course | Oamaru News | Local News in Oamaru

Aoraki Polytechnic will now keep its Oamaru Life Skills L1 programme following overwhelming community feedback.

A proposal was put forward in September to discontinue the course in Ashburton and Oamaru.

However, the polytechnic is discontinuing the National Certificate in Computing L2 and one Oamaru campus job redundancy is still on the cards.

The polytechnic has announced a range of changes across each of its five campuses, which it says will allow it to focus on its core programmes.

The decision follows a seven-week review and consultation process after the September proposal.

Chief executive Kay Nelson said from 2012, Aoraki will discontinue some media, life skills, and lower-level computing programmes.

"In response to community feedback, we will continue some programmes such as Life Skills L1 in Ashburton and Oamaru that initially we proposed to discontinue.

"We believe the community need for life skills is well served by other providers in Timaru, such as South Canterbury Literacy.

"Aoraki Polytechnic will continue to grow the broad area of health and wellbeing across the Christchurch, Timaru and Dunedin campuses," she said. "We will build stronger synergies between Sport and Fitness and Outdoor Recreation."

The decisions were discussed with affected staff at each campus yesterday."There will be 11 potential redundancies - three in Christchurch, one in Ashburton, two in Timaru, one in Oamaru, and four in Dunedin.

"We will work with staff whose roles are to be disestablished to see if there are opportunities for redeployment and will fully support them during the process," she said.

The move is in line with Aoraki Polytechnic's strategic direction for the next three to five years, and the Government's Tertiary Education Strategy (TES) that outlines priorities for tertiary education to increase the number of students achieving at higher levels and improve the educational and financial performance of providers.