Australian Business Week (ABW Enterprise Education)
ABW Enterprise Education involves students in a stimulating, rich and intensive enterprise experience in which students learn many of the realities of operating a business enterprise.  Groups of ten students form a simulated company and assume the key roles of that company's managers. Using a hands-on decision-making process, they make all the decisions affecting their company's performance in the marketplace. The marketplace is a computer simulation of the economy. Over the course of either a one week or 8 week real time trading period, students run their company over a simulated period of two to three trading years, and in competition with other student companies in Australia and England.

The cohort (usually students between 14 and 18 years of age) enters the program with students holding varying skills, abilities and interests.  The program offers varied learning and assessment methods and is able to cater for such student diversity.  During the course of the week students learn about business concepts, develop self awareness, develop skills in problem solving, communication, decision making, team building and learn the value of team work and being enterprising.  Students are given short learning episodes supported by a mentor, create a product idea, develop company names and logos, mount a trade display, prepare a video commercial, and prepare and present a company report both written and oral.  Schools and colleges have a choice of ABW simulations in the Information Technology, Manufacturing, Retail or Hospitality Management (hotel) industries. The ABW Enterprise Education program is supported by a comprehensive ABW kit which includes manuals for each student participant, mentors and coordinators. The kit allows teachers, working with business mentors, to plan, develop and manage the whole program for students, none of whom need have any prior business knowledge.

ABW Enterprise Education is delighted to be sponsoring NEiSE – the first ever National Enterprise in Special Education Conference. 

Black Box Theatre Company
Black Box Theatre Company, founded as a cooperative in 1994, is the longest surviving component of what is now called Black Box Merseyside Ltd.  With an impressive back catalogue of productions the company offers opportunities for new, up-and-coming as well as seasoned actors, writers, directors and technicians to develop their skills and further their experience in main-stage productions.

Black Box Theatre Company is a proud sponsor of NEiSE, and congratulates Oakwood High School on their outstanding success.

Contact: Ian Moore, Managing Director
Telephone: 0151 260 3000
Email: admin@blackboxmerseyside.co.uk   
Website: www.blackboxmerseyside.co.uk  

Bright Sparks
Bright Sparks is an online system that enables young people to capture evidence of their enterprise learning. The original research and development was carried out through the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and supported by funding from Department for Children, Schools and Families. Initially developed as a prototype during 2006/07, this was developed and piloted with over 50 schools from the SSAT's Schools' Enterprise Education Network during 2007/08, in which Oakwood High School was a national pilot school.

Results of the research and the framework of enterprise learning outcomes were shared with other schools and organisations through seminars and conferences. Bright Sparks is one of a handful of assessment models reviewed in an NFER report on the subject commissioned by DCSF and published in 2008.  Ongoing development and user support for the assessment software is now managed by Life Beyond School.

We are delighted to be sponsoring NEiSE, and congratulate Oakwood High School on their success in creating and hosting NEiSE.

Visit the Bright Sparks team in the conference marketplace to discuss you requirements for profiling your students’ enterprise capabilities and skills.

Contact: Adrian Jones
Email: adrian.jones@lifebeyondschool.com
Website: www.lifebeyondschool.com

Cheers Ta Publishing Company
Cheers Ta is an independent publishing house that celebrates excellence in poetry. As well as giving talented poets an opportunity to bring their work to a wider audience, Cheers Ta promotes performance poetry in the community through a number of activities within schools, youth groups, libraries, health care and prisons.

Cheers Ta is run by Mike Garry who is an acclaimed professional poet who uses his skills and experience to promote expression and literacy through the spoken word.  Mike was Poet in residence at Oakwood during the past academic year.

Mike is personally delighted to be sponsoring NEiSE, and looks forward to autographing complimentary delegate copies of his publication.

Contact: Mike Garry
Telephone: 07970 158 191
Email: mikegarry@hotmail.com
Website: www.cheersta.co.uk

Co-operative College
The Co-operative College is an educational charity, founded in 1919, serving the co-operative sector in the UK and globally. Throughout its history the College has developed four key areas of work:

• Developing members and managers.
• Working with co-operatives globally.
• Learning from our heritage.
• Working with schools and young people.

Contact: Mervyn Wilson
Telephone: 0161 246 2946
Email: mervyn@co-op.ac.uk   
Website: www.co-op.ac.uk

Dave Cryer Workshops and Writing
Based in Huddersfield, Dave offers a variety of workshops to primary and secondary schools.  His highly popular 'Dave Days' (coined by Doncaster librarians) offer you a chosen mix of reading, writing and drama activity.   Dave has worked right across the age range from Y1 to Y13 and draws on 16 years of teaching experience alongside his endless passions for reading and writing.  Dave also offers INSET and conference seminars, as well as bespoke workshops.

Dave is pleased to be supporting Oakwood High School, following his period of time as Artist in Residence at Oakwood last year.

Contact: Dave Cryer
Telephone: 0115 9293419
Email: daveobarbus@aol.com
Website: www.davecryer.co.uk

Life Beyond School
Originally part of the Schooltrends group, Life Beyond School is an established organisation with a proven portfolio of products and services designed for equipping young people with the best opportunities for their life. In order to best serve education and prepare; young people for life beyond school, the organisation operates with a set of ethical guiding principles:

The sole aim of Life Beyond School is to equip young people for life beyond school by utilising the best expertise from business and education. This is delivered through a portfolio of related products and services with a development process 'owned' by users.

Our philosophy is to maximise impact through open partnerships with relevant stakeholders, always respecting and engaging practitioner experts. We aim to promote action, rather than developing policy. This will ensure that we can find benefit to funders and business to drive funds into enterprise and PLTS development together with effective employer engagement and therefore effective specialist diploma support.

Visit us in the conference marketplace for a demonstration of ‘Life Beyond School’

Contact: Adrian Jones, Director
Telephone:
Email: adrian.jones@lifebeyondschool.com
Website: www.lifebeyondschool.com

OPEUS – helping schools map, track and record enterprise education
(Formerly known as EnterpriseTracker / EnterpriseGrid)

Meet the team from OPEUSä and see why hundreds of schools across the country use our range of simple and effective tools to map, track and record Enterprise Education, PLTS, SEAL, WRL and many other cross-curriculum dimensions.

We are delighted to be sponsoring NEiSE at Oakwood High School, and wish the staff and students every success

GridMaker
In a two minute demonstration, we’ll quickly show you why teachers are eager to map their projects and activities across the curriculum using GridMakerä.  There’s also the opportunity to take away some of our sample grids, charts, graphs and reports to show others in your school.

PortfolioMaker
We’ll also demonstrate how students are using PortfolioMakerä to capture evidence in ePortfolios to impress future educators or employers – and gain additional qualifications from the work they’re already doing.

OPEUS has tailored ALL their products (and the pricing) to suit special schools - see Dan O’Brien or a member of the OPEUS team for a quick demonstration and claim your FREE fully-functioning trial account.

Contact: Daniel O’Brien
Telephone: 0115 9293419
Email: dan@opeus.org
Website: www.opeus.org

Paul Delbridge-Smith FRSA MA

Paul is an education and pedagogy consultant, following his 15 year career in education and success as National Coordinator for Enterprise Education at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, where he was responsible for the creation of the Schools’ Enterprise Education Network and the formation of the successor network, the ‘Enterprise Network’. 

On achieving an MA in Educational Leadership and Innovation in 2009, Paul was invited by the University of Warwick to continue his research at post doctoral level, researching entrepreneurship and enterprise in educational leadership.  Paul is a member of an international expert panel for enterprise in education, and advises government agencies on enterprise and entrepreneurship strategies for education in response to the international imperative for an enterprising world.  He is a professional trainer, a motivational public speaker and a national voice for the role of enterprise in education.

Paul works with a wide range of schools and organisations from the public, private and third sectors across England to provide expertise in developing enterprise and entrepreneurship strategy for embedding an enterprise culture in education.  His work is founded on ethical, social and cooperative principles.

Paul is delighted to be sponsoring NEiSE at Oakwood High School, and congratulates the staff and pupils on pushing the boundaries and re-defining the role of enterprising and high performing specialist schools. It has been an immense pleasure working with the whole school community over the past 12 months to prepare for this occasion.  Congratulations to everyone!

For enterprise and education consultancy please contact Paul at:
Telephone: 0798 922 3603
Email: paul@enterpriseeducation.net
Website: www.enterpriseeducation.net

So Many Words Theatre Company

We are a vibrant theatre company for young people who have a learning disability.

So Many Words is based in Salford.  We work with young people who have a learning disability.  We do 3 types of work at So Many Words.

WE ARE CREATIVE - We make theatre, film, music, dance, puppetry, mask and more...

WE ARE ISSUE-BASED - We use drama to explore challenges, barriers and fears...

WE TRAIN - We work hard to develop our skills as artists, workshop leaders, directors and technicians...

Contact: Jamie Patterson
Telephone: 0161 786 1920
Email: jpatterson@oakwoodhighschool.co.uk
Website: www.clubbz.com/club/692/eccles/so_many_words_theatre_company

TechSoft UK Ltd

TechSoft UK Ltd. was founded in the mid 1980s and has established itself as the market leading supplier of CAD and CAD/CAM systems (Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacture) to schools in the UK.  We only stock and supply products that we have total confidence in.   Our aim is to provide the right products at the right price, and with the highest levels of support in the industry.  To that end all our sales and support staff are either ex Design and Technology teachers, or are graduates with a Design or other relevant degree.  This means that not only do we have a wealth of background knowledge, we can talk to teachers in the language that they understand.  For these reasons we find that we have a very loyal customer base who keep coming back for more.

TechSoft’s flagship CAD software 2D Design, is now the primary design software in over 5000 schools in the UK, and we are the main UK education dealer for SolidWorks, the industry leading 3D design software.  We offer the most comprehensive range of CAM systems available, many of which are exclusive to TechSoft.  These systems include: Knife Cutting, Milling/Routing, Laser Cutting, Computerised Sewing /Embroidery and 3D Printing.

TechSoft has been working in partnership with Oakwood High School over the past 3 years, and is delighted to presenting at NEiSE.

Contact: Andrew Gregson
Telephone:  01745 535007
Email: email@techsoftuk.co.uk
Website: www.techsoft.co.uk

The Innovation School
Be Inspired!

The Innovation School is a highly acclaimed professional learning company for education and business professionals, and has been founded following extensive national pilots of our highly acclaimed and well researched professional learning and development programmes for teachers and school leaders. 

We focus on unlocking enterprise and innovation attitudes, behaviours, capabilities and skills in young people, through equipping educational professionals, leaders and support staff with the know-how, skills and techniques for learning to learn how to innovate for personal and professional success.

Our learning approach has been developed following 30 years of research into the performance of hundreds of exceptional organisations, and what makes individuals, teams and whole organisations innovative, enterprising and outstanding.  We can teach you to learn the tools and techniques to be able to innovate, and support your through the practical application of innovation best practice, providing you with a selection of best practice innovation tools and techniques against our framework of Idea Generation, Idea Selection, Prototyping and Planning and Idea Implementation.  We challenge you to learn how to INSPIRE, CREATE and CONNECT with your learners and stakeholders, and discover the power of Innovation.

The Innovation School Learning programmes are aimed at all types of education professionals and support staff, and can be accessed by any type of learner across the age and ability range.  Quite simply, we are passionate about unlocking the latent innovative attitudes, behaviours, capabilities and skills in people whatever their age or ability.  Working together our expert mentors and coaches in educational leadership and innovation will support, guide and empower you, your staff and students to innovate.

The Innovation School provides individual, group and whole school learning programmes, with accreditation for anyone wishing to gain professional recognition of their innovation learning either through the Teacher Learning Academy or The Innovation School.  

We are proud to be a major conference sponsor of NEiSE, and we offer a special 20% discount off all our programme fees to any school attending the conference.

Contact: Alan Ward
Telephone: 07811 367 855
Email: alanward@theinnovationschool.co.uk
Website: www.theinnovationschool.co.uk

“The Innovation School is the only provider of professional development which really pinpoints how through applying innovation in cognition and learning, your staff can really transform learning outcomes”.  
Deputy Head Teacher, Norfolk

“The techniques and discussions from today will inform in- school planning and we will distribute the innovation toolkit to all staff to embed in the planning and delivery of lessons. It will directly inform our whole school development of enterprising learning, teaching and leadership. Excellent professional learning sessions, very clear, intelligent, challenging, supportive, friendly, and most of all fun!”
Head of Mathematics, Slough

“Our Year 6 School Council were riveted with the innovation tools and have already begun to use them to support them in making decisions and creatively thinking in other projects and activities.  It was a real joy to see them actually wearing other “Shoes” and this was a real challenge, physically and emotionally.  Worse Case Scenario, Animal Instinct and Malicious Monster are real favourites with the students, but my favourite is “5 Whys” as this stretches students to think beyond the most obvious reasons for their decisions and you can get some really interesting and powerful verbal reasoning happening.”
Primary Phase Leader, Cornwall

uBizEE
uBizEE is a print-shop business designed to be run by students as part of their Enterprise Education. We install a realistic printing environment into schools and colleges and then provide all of the support necessary for students to be able to operate as a self funding and even profit generating business. Students of all abilities create professional results that they can take pride in whilst developing business skills and real business acumen.

We can work hand in hand with your school to facilitate the needs of individual students to ensure that they gain the maximum benefit from the system.  uBizEE is designed to be extremely easy to use with intuitive yet powerful design packages enabling students to produce simply fantastic, commercial quality results regardless of their ability. 

uBizEE is a proud sponsor of NEiSE, and wishes Oakwood High School every success with the conference.

To find out more log-on to www.ubizee.co.uk and be sure to visit uBizEE in the conference marketplace.

Contact: Mark Davis, Managing Director
Telephone: 0161 429 2276
Email: MDavis@sigmasdi.com
Website: www.ubiz-enterprise-education.co.uk/

YoungBiz YBUK LTD – Money made simple….Business made real….
YoungBiz deliver activity based 2 Hour and 1 day workshops in Business and Money. YoungBiz bring together a collection of excellent training materials together with highly motivational and inspirational trainers to give young people better opportunities and choices around how they earn and manage money.  The workshops are:

isit Young Biz in the conference marketplace to find out how you can link the learning in your classrooms to the real world around your learners.

Contact: Tim Hall
Telephone: 07966 472269
Email timhall@youngbizuk.co.uk    
Website: www.youngbizuk.co.uk

Young Chamber UK - ‘developing minds for developing business’.
Young Chamber has continued to expand since its inception in 2001 to become a significant vehicle to provide a consistent framework of student engagement with business. By utilising the Chamber of Commerce network, it becomes easier for schools to meet and talk directly to hundreds of businesses and employers in their local area and find out about career opportunities and developments within their local economy. 

Young Chamber is a powerful tool within the school environment to represent all students and provide the kind of enterprise information they need to make decisions about their future, based on their interests and skills.

Contact: Kevin Smith
Telephone: 07966 472269
Email Kevin.Smith@youngchamber.com
Website: www.youngchamber.com