Killed, Not Starved: Deliberate Neglect of the OERF a Failure of Institutional Duty to Open Education

The roles of New Zealand’s UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources (OER) and the Open Source Technologist supporting Open Education at Otago Polytechnic were terminated on 19 December 2025 following the decision to disestablish the OER Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to supporting the implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation. This truth-to-power post documents the factual record of events, providing a public account dedicated to educators worldwide who continue to advance the goals of open education despite the increasing precarity of those serving the public good.

Foreword

I have dedicated my life’s work to open education. Friends and professional colleagues have expressed shock at the termination of my role as UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources (OER). I thank everyone who commented on the original notification on Linkedin ¹, as well as colleagues who shared their own public reflections on this development, including Alan Levine ², Director of Community Engagement at Open Education Global (Canada) and Paul Stacey former Executive Director of Open Education Global, and Paul Bacsich ³ , Managing Director of Matic Media (United Kingdom). Stephen Downes (Canada) observed that it felt as though the OER Foundation (OERF) was “killed rather than starved ⁴,” a characterisation that closely reflects the circumstances and is cited as the inspiration for the title of this blog post.

OER Foundation: From Strong Institutional Foundations to Institutional Withdrawal

Otago Polytechnic was a trailblazer in open education, becoming the first tertiary education institution in New Zealand to sign the Cape Town Open Education Declaration in 2008⁵. This was followed by the adoption of an OER-enabled intellectual property policy⁶, making it one of the first post-secondary institutions in the world to implement a default Creative Commons Attribution licensing policy⁷.

This early commitment to openness demonstrated a strong alignment with the foundational values required to establish an independent non-profit organisation, and the Council of Otago Polytechnic showed leadership in deciding to establish the OER Foundation Ltd as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2009, predating the 2012 UNESCO Paris Declaration on OER. In 2012, Otago Polytechnic was awarded a Commonwealth of Learning Chair, followed in 2013 by a UNESCO Chair in OER.

Over the years, the OER Foundation has earned an international reputation in open education, reflected in numerous international awards⁸. In 2024, the Chair of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO (NATCOM) formally thanked the UNESCO Chair in OER for his “exceptional work and unwavering dedication to the field of OER,” noting that the OER Foundation’s work “has not only significantly advanced educational access and equity, but has also strengthened the principles of open knowledge and shared learning globally.” The NATCOM further observed that these contributions are “pivotal in ensuring that education remains a universally accessible right, in line with UNESCO’s core mission.”

Since inception, there was an expectation from Otago Polytechnic that the Foundation would operate as a self-funded initiative. The OERF achieved this goal with a proven track record of generating significant revenue for open education initiatives through service contracts, OERu membership fees and international donor funding, sustaining FTE salary costs as a self-funded operation for 14 years. Audited financial statements of the OER Foundation for the financial years 2009 to 2022 show that it generated $4.3 million in external funding, exceeding total salary costs of $3.7 million charged to the Foundation, with approximately 53% of this revenue sourced from offshore donors.

In late 2022, Te Pūkenga (New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology) unilaterally revoked the letter of comfort previously provided by the Council of Otago Polytechnic prior to the amalgamation of New Zealand polytechnics, which suddenly rendered the Foundation technically insolvent. Under the Foundation’s constitution, this status prohibited Directors from taking on any new obligations, including revenue-generating activities, from 2023 onward.

Poor shareholder stewardship and prolonged neglect of its non-profit subsidiary

The shareholder’s poor stewardship effectively removed the OER Foundation’s ability to lawfully generate revenue. As a consequence, the roles of the Director and Open Source Technologist were disestablished in order to reduce salary costs for Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga. Further details of the prolonged neglect of the Foundation are summarised below.

Following New Zealand’s Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE), initiated in 2020 and culminating in the establishment of Te Pūkenga, the OER Foundation (OERF) Ltd. experienced several years of shareholder neglect, including:

• Representatives of Te Pūkenga signing official Foundation documentation while not being appointed directors of the Foundation and therefore not having the authority to do so;
• Delaying disclosure of material information to the Board of Directors they required to execute their duties regarding approval of Foundation budgets and approval of financial statements.
• The shareholder’s failure to fill vacancies in its designated board positions as required by the Foundation’s constitution and policy statements, despite multiple written requests to the Chief Executive of Te Pūkenga and the Executive Director of Otago Polytechnic;
• The shareholder’s failure to act on the Foundation’s request to remedy a technical breach of the Companies Act, where it exposed Foundation directors to potential penalties under section 374 for non-compliance with section 201 of the Act (a Te Pūkenga representative signed the OERF’s financial statements while not being a director); and
• The shareholder allowing the terms of all its appointed Foundation directors to lapse without replacement.
• No new board of directors was appointed for two and a half months following the expiry of the shareholder-approved term extensions on 30 September 2024.

When Te Pūkenga assumed the shareholding of the OER Foundation in December 2022, the company’s Directors were advised by the Chair of the Te Pūkenga Council that wholly owned subsidiaries must not undertake activities that the parent entity itself does not have the authority to undertake under section 97 of the Crown Entities Act 2004. The Directors were further advised that, once Te Pūkenga’s organisational structure had been determined, the shareholder would engage more substantively on the future role of the Foundation within that structure. Substantive discussions with the Board did not take place.

The unilateral withdrawal of the OER Foundation’s letter of comfort made the Foundation technically insolvent. As a result, the Foundation was effectively placed in a holding pattern and was able only to complete existing contracts-for-service. It was also required to discontinue invoicing for OERu membership fees, its primary source of income, as the Foundation’s constitution prevented the non-profit from entering into new obligations in the absence of financial assurance.

These constraints were compounded by the absence of effective communication and accountability arrangements between the Foundation’s Managing Director and the shareholder. From December 2022 to December 2024, the Managing Director did not have a designated line manager following the resignation of the former Secretary to the Board from Otago Polytechnic, who had also served as the accountable line manager for staff of the Open Education Resource Centre (OERC) at Otago Polytechnic. While the OER Foundation did not directly employ staff, the salary costs of the Managing Director and the Open Source Technologist at the OERC were charged to the Foundation for the provision of management and technology services.

In early 2023, the OER Foundation Board took proactive steps to address this absence of accountability by passing a formal resolution requesting that the Chief Executive of Te Pūkenga appoint an interim line manager for the Managing Director. The Board also submitted recommendations for reconstituting the Foundation’s Board to reflect the changed shareholding arrangements. No response was received from the Chief Executive.

Despite numerous subsequent requests to both the Chief Executive of Te Pūkenga and the Executive Director of Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga to appoint an interim line manager, including feedback submitted through a formal consultation process following the announcement of Te Pūkenga’s disestablishment, no line manager was designated for a period of two years.

The decisive failing was Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga’s directive not to limit the charge for management and technology services to the Foundation to the contractual income received in advance for 2024, as had been done in 2023. This decision meant that the OER Foundation could no longer be regarded as a going concern. Furthermore, this action would increase the debt of the Foundation owed to the shareholder, which was not approved by the Board of Directors.

The Managing Director formally advised the Chief Executive and the Executive Director of Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga before communicating with the funder that:

“This decision could jeopardise approximately half a million dollars of future funding from our major donor and may necessitate the repayment of a portion of the current grant, potentially up to $135,000.”

No response was received.

As a consequence, the Board was compelled to pass a resolution to disclose the going-concern risks to a major funder and to advise that the Foundation could not accept continuation funding. To do otherwise would have exposed the Directors to potential liability for reckless trading. This lost ability to generate revenue has directly led to the termination of New Zealand’s UNESCO Chair in OER and Open Source Technologist. Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga’s Deputy Executive Director, Academic Delivery, stated that reducing personnel costs associated with the OER Centre would reduce the institution’s overall costs. The actions taken by the shareholder resulted in the Foundation no longer being able to continue operating as a self-funded entity, notwithstanding that it had done so for 14 years.

In April 2024 the shareholder allowed the terms of all OER Foundation Directors to expire, creating a governance crisis for the non-profit. The Managing Director formally advised the Chief Executive of this lapse. Although none of the Directors sought reconfirmation or extension of their appointments, Te Pūkenga subsequently and unilaterally extended the terms of all former Directors for a further five months, until 30 September 2025, despite the Foundation’s constitution allowing for a standard three-year term.

In July 2025, Otago Polytechnic circulated a consultation document proposing the dissolution of the OER Foundation. The document indicated that, should the Foundation be dissolved, the work undertaken by the 2.0 FTE staff allocated to the Open Education Resource Centre (OERC) would cease permanently. The shareholder did not inform the members of the OER Foundation Board of the proposed dissolution, nor were they invited to submit responses to the consultation document.

In response to the proposal to dissolve the OER Foundation, staff of the Open Education Resource Centre (OERC) submitted written feedback recommending that Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga:

“institute a six-month transition period for institutions and learners using OERu content and open infrastructure to secure alternatives. An abrupt shutdown would be unethical and cause significant international reputational damage to Otago Polytechnic given the numbers of dependent international learners. We recommend that Te Pūkenga allow for the transfer of the Foundation’s shares during this period should another philanthropic organisation wish to assume its operations.”

At the final consultation outcome meeting, the former Managing Director asked about the outcome of the written feedback relating to the proposed transfer of shares. Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga’s Deputy Executive Director, Academic Delivery, stated that he did not know the answer to this question. No specific feedback was provided regarding a transition period to support an ethical wind-down of OERF web services. The Deputy Executive Director, Academic Delivery, also stated that he did not consider a six-month transition period to be necessary but provided no supporting rationale to justify this position. Otago Polytechnic agreed to take the discussion regarding the transfer of shares offline and requested a high-level overview of the responsibilities required to wind up activities, notwithstanding that these issues had already been submitted as written feedback as part of the formal consultation process.

On 2 December 2025, Otago Polytechnic advised that former OERC staff could purchase the OER Foundation shares for $1 while serving their notice period, on the condition that Otago Polytechnic be fully dissociated from the Foundation and that the former staff acquiring the shares assume full responsibility for all operational matters. This late in the process, two working weeks before staff’s final working day, as well as being just prior to the Christmas shutdown, the available time would have been insufficient to secure donor funding to sustain OERF operations. In addition, unemployed, the former OERC staff did not have the financial capacity to meet server infrastructure costs in a personal capacity. As a result, the offer to purchase the shares was declined.

Former OERC staff proposed providing support for an ethical wind-down of services over the first semester of 2026; however, this proposal was not accepted. Otago Polytechnic advised that OERF modules would no longer be monitored from 19 December 2025 and reiterated that it had not committed to ensuring continued access to the self-study, open online courses hosted by OERF through mid-2026.

It became clear that Otago Polytechnic was not going to proactively provide transparent communication to the thousands of educators and learners globally using OERF services before the last working day of staff whose roles had been terminated. The former Managing Director of the OERF posted a communication informing users of the termination of OER Foundation Services in his personal capacity on 12 December 2025⁹.

During this period of shareholder neglect, several actions were undertaken that were inconsistent with the subsequent decision to terminate open education operations. For example, in March 2024, the Chief Executive signed an agreement with UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to join the UNESCO UNITWIN Network on Open Education. This network, coordinated by the University of Nantes in France, brings together fifteen UNESCO Chairs in Open Education from thirteen countries. A key objective of the agreement is to “develop and promote a shared open infrastructure and open-source tools for the use of local, regional and global open education communities, with a view to strengthening the design, dissemination, and use of open education and open educational resources.” This was a core commitment of the OER Foundation to the network, for which it had received global recognition in the past.

In addition, in December 2024, Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga renewed its Creative Commons Attribution intellectual property policy, promoting free and open access to its educational materials at a policy level. The original adoption of this policy by the previous incarnation of Otago Polytechnic is the primary reason the OERF was established at the institution.

The consequence of this neglect is that, notwithstanding the hosting of a UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources, the shareholder has not fulfilled its contractual obligations regarding participation in the UNESCO UNITWIN Network on Open Education, and has chosen to completely disestablish its open education operations. In doing so, it disregards Action Area 4 of the 2019 UNESCO OER Recommendation, adopted by Member States, which calls for the development of sustainable models for the creation and use of OER.

(Posted by Wayne Mackintosh PhD, Open Educator. Democratising equitable access to knowledge through open solutions.)

Notes

1. Wayne Mackintosh (2025) Important notice about the OER Foundation. Notification published on Linkedin. ↩︎
2. Alan Levine (2025) Share some gratitude for the OER Foundation, for it is no more. Open Education Global. ↩︎
3. Paul Bacsich (2025) Reflections on the closure of the OER Foundation and the implications for OER policies worldwide. Matic media. ↩︎
4. Stephen Downes (2025) Terminating OER Foundation Services. OLDaily. ↩︎
5. Leigh Blackall (2010). Open Education Practices: A User Guide for Organisations. Wikibooks. ↩︎
6. WikiEducator (2008) An intellectual property policy for our times. Otago Polytechnic. ↩︎
7. Jane Park (2008) “Attribution Only” as Default Policy — Otago Polytechnic on the How and Why of CC BY. Creative Commons. ↩︎
8. International awards
   (1) 2019 Award for Excellence in Distance Education Materials conferred by the Commonwealth of Learning
   (2) 2019 Individual Prize of Excellence conferred by the International Council for Open and Distance Education
   (3) 2020 Global Leadership Award conferred by Open Education Global
   (4) 2021Open Infrastructure Award of Excellence conferred by Open Education Global ↩︎
9. OERF Open governance policy
   The OER Foundation operates under an open philanthropy policy that emphasises transparency, sharing, and collaboration. In accordance with this policy, the former Managing Director prepared a draft public communication advising of the termination of services and provided it to Otago Polytechnic prior to publication for the purpose of identifying any factual inaccuracies. No factual errors were identified. Otago Polytechnic’s communications team subsequently redacted elements of the draft prior to release. ↩︎