The Open Education Resource Foundation (OERF), established in 2009 by its original shareholder Otago Polytechnic, is a charitable organisation dedicated to expanding access to affordable higher education through the implementation of UNESCO’s Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER). The New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology1, the OERF’s sole shareholder, has taken a decision to dissolve the non-profit Foundation.
As a consequence, the roles of the Managing Director, New Zealand’s UNESCO Chair in OER, and the Open Source Technologist will be disestablished, with their final working day on 19 December 2025. After this date, these staff of the Open Education Resource Centre (OERC) at Otago Polytechnic assigned to the Foundation will no longer be able to guarantee continued access to OERF-maintained websites.
In early 2023, Te Pūkenga withdrew the OERF’s letter of comfort, which had been provided by Otago Polytechnic during the organisation’s first 14 years of operation. This action resulted in the technical insolvency of the OERF, and the company’s constitution prevented Directors from taking on new obligations while insolvent. This removed the non-profit Foundation’s ability to generate revenue from the international donor community, OERu membership fees, and international contracts for service. A shareholder determination in 2024 subsequently removed the OERF’s going-concern status, preventing the Directors from seeking continuation funding from its primary donor.
The OERF hosts a wide range of public-facing websites, including free online course platforms, discussion forums, federated social media services, and the WikiEducator community project2. Despite exhausting all avenues to sustain the open education initiative, the company has not been successful.
Users of OERF-maintained websites are advised to consider taking immediate steps to back up their data. Learners using OERF-hosted course materials should also identify alternative resources to support their studies, as former staff of the Open Education Resource Centre at Otago Polytechnic cannot provide any guarantees regarding the continuation of these services for any reasonable period of time.
Otago Polytechnic has advised that the site housing OERF modules will not be monitored from December 19 2025 and is expected to be shutdown mid 2026.
The OERF extends its deepest gratitude to the international donors, partner institutions, and members of the global education community who have provided steadfast and enthusiastic support for the Foundation’s open education mission over the past 16 years.
(Posted by former Managing Director of the OER Foundation in the interests of ensuring the company’s policy commitment to open governance and transparency for learners, the WikiEducator community and all account holders of OERF web services. 12 December 2025. Content dedicated to the public domain.)
- Restructure and disestablishment of New Zealand’s Vocational Education system
The cast of characters in this communication is confusing but is summarised as follows: The New Zealand Government’s Vocational Education and Training Reform Amendment Act 2020 aimed to create a more unified, sustainable, and responsive system across Aotearoa New Zealand. The Act resulted in a single Crown Entity called “Te Pūkenga | New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology” whereby the 16 former Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics, including Otago Polytechnic, the OERF’s original shareholder, and various Industry Training Organisations (ITOs) were disestablished and reconstituted under a unified institution. In the case of the OERF, the sole shareholding was transferred to Te Pūkenga. The subsequent Government, in 2023, announced its intention to reverse this initiative, and instead disestablish Te Pūkenga, beginning the process of ‘unwinding’ the unified entity into new hybrid of a group of potentially independent institutions – pending assessments of their financial sustainability.
↩︎ - Scale of the OERF’s web services supporting open education
The OER Foundation maintains an extensive Free and Open Source Software technology infrastructure, specifically 48 instances of 32 different web application services in support of its charitable mission, operating across eleven servers (one physical and 10 virtual) located in Germany and the United States. Web traffic data shows that this infrastructure supports in excess of 140 million unique visitors from over 120 different countries a year. An open education model does not require user registration to access learning materials, but prior research indicates that between 100,000 and 200,000 people use the range of open online courses hosted by the OERF each year in a variety of ways. Examples include:
1) students supplementing their studies at their home institutions,
2) universities in developing countries prescribing OERF-maintained courses for their own qualifications, and
3) educators using the WikiEducator platform to support their teaching. ↩︎