Westport Deep Sea Fishing Ltd blamed an IT change for contributing to its miscalculation. Photo: 123RF
A commercial fishing school has repaid more than $1 million to the government, after errors that included claiming funding for students who never attended.
Westport Deep Sea Fishing Ltd said an IT change and a decision to waive fees for flood-affected students contributed to the problems.
A Tertiary Education Commission report said the private tertiary institution received funding for 523 full-time equivalent students in the four years from 2020 to the end of 2023.
An audit last year "revealed significant issues with how student data was reported" and a subsequent investigation found it should have received funding for only 413 FTE students, a difference of almost 110 FTE.
The report said, before the audit, the commission had already recovered $264,079 in fees-free funding, due to breaches of the scheme's funding agreement between 2020-23.
It said the audit also found a course that made up 0.0333 of a course of study was incorrectly entered as 0.333, meaning the school received $3000 more per student enrolment than it should have.
"This resulted in an indicative funding recovery of $354,081 for 116 students," the report said.
The investigation found 122 students (109 FTE) were invalid enrolments.
The report said the school confirmed it "preloaded" a lot of students into its 2023 student data return, "but had failed to remove any enrolments which did not eventuate or where the learner did not meet the requirements for a confirmed learner enrolment".
It said the school also claimed funding for nine students who had been granted recognition of prior learning, meaning the school awarded them credit for existing knowledge, without actually providing any tuition.
The report said the investigation found the school needed to repay a further $633,550.
"WDSF has acknowledged the invalid enrolments that were identified during this work, attributing the errors to administrative oversights," the report said. "As indicated above, the preloading of enrolments in the 2023 SDR, without sufficient removal of any learners who did not progress to a full enrolment, has created significant overfunding."
It said the school entered a repayment plan and the money would be repaid by June 2025.
"The TEC notes that, while a number of issues were identified, WDSF management and staff have engaged openly and co-operatively throughout the audit and investigation process," the report said.
School owner Peter Maich told RNZ the fees-free repayment followed a decision to waive fees for students who were not able to attend courses, due to flooding in Bay of Plenty.
He said the school was told that, because it was not charging a fee, it should not have claimed fees-free funding, which at the time covered the first year of fees for first-time tertiary students.
Maich said a change in IT provider for data returns to the Tertiary Education Commission resulted in duplicate enrolments.
He said the failure to remove students from its 2023 data return was due to the school being audited during the period it would normally remove non-attenders from its system.
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