Enterprise Education makes New Zealand take notice

25 August, 2005

Northland Enterprise Education makes New Zealand sit up and take notice

“Fantastic! It was a day that put Northland right at the top of New Zealand’s developments in enterprise education,” stated Frank Leadley, Northland’s Enterprise Education Director when commenting on the National Strategic Planning Workshop held at the Copthorne Hotel and Resort Bay of Islands on Thursday 18 August.

“It was an extremely significant event,” he continued, “we had 45 highly influential people from throughout the country who came together to consider how the key strategic advantages of our Northland Enterprising Teachers project (NET) could be further strengthened and made nationally available. This is a huge compliment to our work. While others talk, we have been doing.”

The NET project is the brain child of Frank Leadley, a former secondary school principal, and has been developed with funding from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the strong support of Enterprise Northland, and significant funding assistance from Top Energy and Northpower.

The NET project has several aims, but is essentially about providing students with an enterprising approach to the delivery of the current curricula and in developing partnership projects with community businesses and organisations to enhance the relevancy of the curriculum. The NET project is currently in 18 of Northland’s 22 secondary schools, with others intending to come in next year.

“The aim of the National Strategic Planning Workshop,” enthused Frank Leadley, was to consider a strategy whereby the NET project could become a basis for school-based professional development which could be expanded into other regions and to then become nationally available. The enthusiasm for this at the Workshop was contagious, and a Task Force has been formed with representatives from Northland, the Ministry of Education, other regions and interested organisations to really move this thing along. We are on the crest of a wave right now.”

The National Strategy Workshop was followed on the Friday by the equally successful NET Workshop mainly for Northland teachers and principals, but attendance from Canterbury, the West Coast, Nelson, Hamilton, North Shore, Wellington and Rotorua indicated the huge interest nationwide in what Northland has achieved in the area of enterprise education.

ENDS

Left to right: Shirley Pyke of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and some of the Enterprise Northland team, Frank Leadley - Enterprise Education Director, Mike Simm - Chair and Brian Roberts - Chief Executive Officer - “while others talk, we have been doing”.

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