Salendine Nook High School

Case study information

We are currently using the Localbiz Project at our school and have been doing so for over three years. Localbiz has been used to deliver business and enterprise skills to our students, helping them to prepare for the world of work as well as making smarter study options for college and subsequently university.

The programme update, which will be available from February 2010, will have a number of additional new features, enabling more teachers to be involved and extending its potential use to students in every year group. This means that students could start working on specific aspects of the project (starting from Year 7) and be confident and experienced enough to take on more senior management roles in their final year.

Staff working on the project include:

Cormac Kelly  Business Studies Teacher

Rachael Ayres English Teacher

Tom Butler PHSE Citizenship teacher

Jen Woolgar Drama teacher.

and more teachers will be involved early next year when we aim to relaunch with the One Day Programme.

The new model for the learning programme means that student/business relationships can be developed further, citizenship issues can be better explored, and we also get the opportunity to participate in the revenue share scheme.

The opportunity to involve the local community in this venture is of particular benefit with the potential for pupils and adults to learn alongside each other, to their mutual benefit.

To achieve this we will be identifing a number of parents (especially Mums and Dads who run a business or organisation locally), who are keen to participate in the learning process with their children and learn something themselves. They will do this through working together to update pages on the website adding news stories and events, and keeping their business listing up-to-date and attractive.  In doing so, each participant (students and parents) will develop new skills sets and confidence.

The learning activities will include applying IT and media skills but, more importantly, it provides a vehicle for pupils with some adult support, to research and report on all aspects of community life.

The benfits to local businesses/organisations will be a colourful and eye-catching web page(s) on the website, which parents at the school, their relations and outside visitors will regularly access, hopefully attracting new business.

Ofsted encourages schools to start developing enterprise skills in pupils from Key Stage 2 onwards and this project is an ideal way for our school to achive this an make learning more relevant to both business and society.

David Milnes

Assistant Head Teacher