A Napier engineering apprentice is on a mission to get more people into trades. Paul Taurima is an engineering apprentice at Foot Engineering in Napier through Competenz (an industry training organisation). He is a speaker at a series of events organised by Competenz to encourage Maori and Pasifika school levers into trades apprenticeships, especially engineering. Mr Taurima says his job involves a range of roles and responsibilities to ensure the workplace runs smoothly including being a courier driver, rubbish man, a builder, forklift driver and cleaner as well as engineering tasks. "Every day is a challenge and that's why I…

Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce has today released the 2016 Science and Innovation System Performance Report, the first of an annual series which presents data on the research outputs, impacts, funding, and overall performance of science and innovation in New Zealand. “This report provides us with a performance benchmark against other OECD countries including the other small advanced economies – Israel, Switzerland, Singapore, Finland, Ireland and Denmark,” Mr Joyce says. “The report increases transparency by showing how public funding for science and innovation is being invested, and it begins to give a direct line-of-sight to the benefits that funding…