A New Zealand Specialist Education Agent is recognised by Education New Zealand, New Zealand government agencies and education institutions as a New Zealand education specialist. This is because the NZSA training process provides a credible demonstration of an agents’ knowledge about New Zealand education and their commitment to an ethical agent code of conduct.

The New Zealand Specialist Agent (NZSA) programme is run by Education New Zealand (ENZ) in depth, new and emerging markets around the world. The main aims and benefits of the programme are:

1.    To support qualified and motivated education Agents, and their personnel, to become more effective at marketing New Zealand education and New Zealand education institutions. Support comes in many forms:
•    The membership accreditation training workshop
•    The NZSA membership certificate that can be shown to clients
•    NZSA logo file which can be used as evidence of your New Zealand education knowledge
•    Industry and market information circulated by ENZ, including your agency’s logo and contact details listed on high ranking official New Zealand education websites www.newzealandeducated.com and www.educationnz.org.nz. These web pages refer students and New Zealand institutions directly to your agency.
•    Password details to enter a limited access website containing selected New Zealand education marketing resources for downloading including PowerPoint files, video clips, images and collateral
•    Preferential access to selected in market New Zealand education fairs and familiarisation trips to New Zealand.

2.    To make NZSA members known to New Zealand education institutions and other industry stakeholders so that they can benefit from working with the most qualified, professional and effective education Agents.
   
3.    To create a database of trained specialist agents for NZ institutions.

ENZ is committed to ensuring that the reputation and standing of the NZSA group and its members are upheld; and that the NZSA group remains a meaningful and valuable industry body for its members and all other stakeholders. As part of this commitment ENZ has in place a formal complaints process to deal with any complaint made about an NZSA member.

It should be noted that, while NZSA members are trained and accredited by ENZ, NZ institutions are free to work with any education agent.

Membership is granted to Agents, not individuals

Today, an Agent (Agency), not an individual owner, manager or counsellor (as was the case when the programme was originally established in 2007), gains NZSA membership. This is because experience over the past two years has shown that:

•    It is quite common for individual education counsellors to move between Agents, leaving the sponsoring Agent out of pocket for the accreditation fee and with no status.
 
•    Even if the counsellor’s NZSA status contributed to their success in obtaining a new role elsewhere, if the new employer has no interest in promoting New Zealand, and/or New Zealand is not included within their business strategy, then the counsellor’s accreditation status becomes irrelevant.

•    NZ institutions have agreements with Agents, not individual counsellors. As a result, when contacted at the reference checking stage, many NZ institutions responded stating that they know the Agent, but have not dealt with that particular individual counsellor. 
Accrediting Agents rather than individual members from within them gets around these draw backs.

As part of the change from individual member accreditation to Agent accreditation, an additional clause to the existing NZSA Code of Conduct has been added requiring Agents to take responsibility to train any new staff members hired during the accreditation period whose portfolio is to promote NZ education. The Agent now receives a branded Accreditation Certificate, with individual owners, managers and counsellors receiving a participation certificate.  This new system will be reviewed again in July 2011.

Where transition from individual to agency member status is required:
In situations where an individual had gained NZSA member status but their agency had not (pre 2010), ENZ encourages those agencies to secure NZSA member status as soon as possible. Preference will be given to the owner or most senior staff member in the first instance from those agencies to attend an NZSA training workshop.