New Zealand Educational Entrepreneurs

Greetings from the Griffin Room, overlooking Lake Burley Griffin at the Australian National University in Canberra, where Steve Thomas is speaking on ‘Putting a Value On It’. The value that New Zealand educational entrepreneurs plan to create. He started by defining social entrepreneurship, in terms of innovation, revenue generation for improving welfare. He said there was not much research on this.

He is studying "Partnership Schools" (Kura Hourua)  (PSKH). These allow more flexibility in teaching, with different teaching hours and unregistered teachers. Examples included military style schools, farm based and Mauri and pacific inland culture orientated schools. Some schools plan to use Wraparound Services to address health and low socio-economic status.

Steve pointed out that some of these services are not new, but are being delivered in new ways. But it is too early to show this works.

I asked Steve about use of e-learning in NZ schools, given the NZ Education Department developed the Mahara e-portfolio software. He commented that several of the people interviewed had commented they were looking at IT use, but did not seem to be clear on how to do this.