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”.