Kirkley High School successfully applied for a grant from the Adnams Charity in 2000 and our partnership has developed ever since. As a company we took the decision that rather than simply signing a cheque, we wanted become more involved. Kirkley was developing a pioneering programme to engage students with entrepreneurial skills and invited Adnams to get involved and give an input from the very earliest stages. The Entrepreneurial Spirit programme was launched in 2003 and Adnams has supported the programme since it began by inviting the students to work alongside Adnams employees each week for two terms to get a real insight to business. Not only is there a value in gaining practical knowledge, but also we find that their confidence and aspirations improve as does their attendance and behaviour back at school.
The School is one of only a handful in the country to have been awarded a grant from the Department for Education and Skills to develop enterprise within the curriculum.
Adnams has been involved from the early planning stages, giving us the opportunity to imbed the message that learning about enterprise can be done at the same time as recognising that business should act responsibly within society.
The mentors have volunteered from all areas and at all levels of the business - the students get a real taste of what ‘business’ at Adnams really means. This is not simply about ‘giving them something to do’, our aim is to engage them at every opportunity in hands-on activity.
The evidence speaks for itself: the students confidence grows by the week – as does their knowledge of business; they are able to work together as individuals or in a group and early evidence suggests that their attendance, punctuality and behaviour at school has notably improved. Most importantly they clearly enjoy themselves!
Adnams entered into this project as a means of delivering on our commitment to the local community, based on the evidence of real need and the opportunity to make a difference. We were clear from the start that the success of the project for us should be measured in three ways:
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Improvement in self-belief, application and achievement on the part of the Kirkley students selected for this project.
- Improvement in the (already-high) levels of motivation, personal fulfilment and corporate pride on the part of the Adnams employees involved in this scheme.
- Enhancement of public perceptions of Adnams, particularly in our heartland, evidenced by favourable PR coverage in local media.
On all of these counts we feel more than confident that there is clear evidence of success – and we have a huge sense of pride of being involved in a project which may well become a beacon for others (schools and businesses), showing what can be done with determination, careful planning, clarity and goodwill.
Now in its fifth year, the project has evolved along the way – it wouldn’t be very enterprising to keep doing the same thing each year would it? The experience that a group of teachers from Kirkley gained from setting up the programme, led them to believe that there was a gap in the provision of enterprise education, not only in their own school, but in many others across the region. This led to the establishment of Enterprise Lowestoft - one of the first Community Interest Companies (cic) in the country.
Developed by teachers for teachers, the team at Enterprise Lowestoft truly understands the educational system and provides schools with workable solutions to address the enterprise agenda. In practice this means they develop programmes that can work as a stand-alone activity or can enhance the school curriculum throughout the year. Their experience of working with companies such as Adnams means they have a good insight to business and are able to bridge some of the misunderstandings that often exist between business and education. They also run professional development programmes to help teachers develop their own programmes to promote enterprise activities and learning.
Enterprise Lowestoft works in partnership with other many other organisations was integral to the successful bid to become one of only four Enterprise Hubs in the UK bringing the national Enterprise Insight Make you Mark campaign to Waveney. Adnams is still very much involved with this project with one of our employees taking a position on the Enterprise Lowestoft Board of Directors.