**PRESS RELEASE**

FROM SPECIAL MEASURES TO SPECIAL AWARDS
A First for Oldham and The Enterprise Centre.
9 & 10 year olds with RVQ qualifications.

A group of Year five and six children from Limeside Primary School have become the first children in the UK to achieve a Level 2 ASET qualification Certificate in Contribution to Project Planning.

When head Helen Arya joined Limeside Primary in 2005, the school was in special measures. This latest success is testament to Helen’s wholistic approach to the development of her pupils and the school, and inviting Business Management company The Enterprise Centre and personal development company Inspiri to deliver the training programme is a measure of her commitment to achievement and wellbeing. The qualification is an enormous boost to the children’s self-esteem and to the social capital of the local community.

The Enterprise Centre have been successfully delivering these brand new qualifications in Project Planning and Project Management since they designed them in partnership with ASET awarding body in 2004. However, this is the first time they have delivered the programmes to primary age children. To achieve this amazing success they teamed up with Michele Henshaw of Inspiri Coaching to ensure the delivery had everything necessary to engage the children fully and to manage their emotional wellbeing in line with the learning process.
Both TEC and Inspiri are passionate about equipping children with transferable skills for life. So, while TEC put a focus on teaching the practical aspects of project planning, explaining the various areas of life they can be applied to – from planning an event to preparing for exams – Inspiri worked with the children to develop focussing, self awareness, stress management and relaxation techniques.

The project is the first of its kind in that it addresses both enterprise and wellbeing and has been so successful at Limeside that it is being offered to other schools throughout the borough.

Project Manager and Deputy Head, Kathy Maskell said “The project has been inspirational and revealed many latent talents within the students. As a school, we have worked hard on developing children’s problem solving and key skills. The work of TEC and Inspiri has enhanced this enormously by enabling children to apply all these skills in a real life, sink or swim situation. As a school, we talk a lot about experiential learning but it was a big leap to empower the children so much”.

When Ofsted inspected the school during the project, they described this method of working as outstanding and an excellent way of meeting the enjoy and achieve, and economic well being aspects of the Every Child Matters agenda.

Well now I am back from my holiday in the Caribbean, which I must say was Awesome! I just have enough time to give a catch up with what’s been happening with The Enterprise Centre.

We took a hard knock this month when Hopwood College took a strategic decision 9 for them that is)  to back out of the Heywood Skills Ladder bid. They seem to have some internal conflicts going which has made them re focus their priorities. The impact has been significant to us, both financially and ethically, as we like to finish what we start. A great deal of time was invested into the project and now it has all been for nothing. Without the College partnership to provide the match we are not in a position to undertake the work single-handed. The NDC are non too happy either as they will now incur an under spend and will be sending back £100,000 funding.

We are advised that Heywood will be re commissioning the project and with that in mind we are in discussions with Accrington & Rosendale and we will be contacting Bury College. They say everything is for a reason and I am sure that this will one day be apparent. But for now we are very sad as we really believed that we could have had a significant impact on the aspirations of individuals in Heywood in particular the young people. Ah well not this time but we will re group to fight another day. Maybe we should have been called The Phoenix Centre….??

So on a lighter and much more positive note, we are continuing our work with the Oldham Collective. We have now completed work on Brooks advisory Service, their outcome is the establishment of a new Social Enterprise.

Gremlins recycling bike organisation is now about to be incorporated and has a full marketing plan to work with. Regenda Landscapes has developed its first stage business plan and we are continuing an additional piece of work looking at setting up a training arm to add to the current products and services.
Other work we are involved with are The Real Nappy Group, Pennine Pens, The Street College and OWL recycling. All really exciting stuff and we are loving it!

We continue our work with schools, in Totty we have managed to get project on the PSE curriculum, the students love it and they will benefit from an extra qualification at the end. We are still looking for budgets to support some of the motivational work that want to do…. Sandra Smethurst at the same www.URL.co.uk will be working with us. She has some amazing videos on her site and we can’t wait to get a project going.

Finally for this time………You may have noticed that Bev Fletcher one of our associates has left us. This is so she can focus her efforts on BFAssociates. We continue to maintain contact with Bev, we miss her but we wish her all the luck in the world with driving her own company forward.

We are very excited about our new partnership bid with Hopwood College, as we have been successful in getting through stage one of the commissioning round in the New Heart for Heywood training initiative.

The skills ladder will provide a seamless approach to upskilling the people of New Heart of Heywood in order that they are better equipped to manage the job opportunities available in the future.  Starting at the pre entry stage we will change lives by building into the programme some life coaching skills. In particular we will focus on building new lives through the development self-esteem, confidence and motivation. 

We will initially put on a number of motivational building events in strategic locations across the area. These events will be facilitated by ourselves and we will engage the expertise of others such as Motivational Systems UK http://www.motivationalsystems.co.uk  and Sandra Smethurst http://www.sandrasmethurst.com/

September will be a busy a month for us, as you can see we have launched our Brand new website complete with our new branding. What do you think of the new logo? Website? Drop us a line at info@theenterprisecentre.co.uk

“The Enterprise Centre” team, which as you can see has grown, recently are now working very closely with The Oldham Collective. We are providing support for a number of new and growing Social Enterprises. As always it is our aim to make Social Enterprise the preferred option for service provision. Using the many experiences we have gained in Manchester City we feel that we bring some additional value to other work across the sub region. We are always interested in working in partnership and if you think that you would benefit from being linked to us at “The Enterprise Centre” then drop me a line on Alison@theenterprisecentre.co.uk

The young apprentice package, which has been designed in partnership with Neil Coe of Tottington High School, will very soon be ready for purchase at a special introductory price. It is our intention to launch out to schools across the sub region early September. The package provides everything a school would need to know including all the templates if they wish to put on a Young Apprentice programme at their school. This year we will also pilot a cross-school approach in the Bury area. If you are interested in more information about this contact our school development on schools@theenterprisecentre.co.uk

This months also sees some new partnerships forming, we are working closely with CTAC on a tender for feasibility study in New Heart of Heywood… fingers crossed as we have some great ideas for the delivery.

We are developing another tender with Hopwood College looking at a skills ladder model again for the new heart of Heywood project. This would be really great if we got to deliver this as it brings our community work together with our training background really into an exciting package of delivery.