On Friday 20th November over 120 delegates joined the Norfolk Chamber for a morning of learning from and connecting with Norfolk Schools at Holiday Inn Norwich North. Delegates heard from seven different schools with the main focus being upon Simon Fox, Principal at Flegg High School and the Young Chamber Executive Committee from Aylsham High School.
The morning was kindly sponsored by one of our Gold Patrons – Norse, Justin Galliford from Norse spoke to everyone and explained how the key to finding good people in business is to bridge the gap between education and the work place. The event was hosted by Matthew Hudson, ITV Anglia, who took delegates through a busy morning of icebreakers, breakfast, presentations, group discussions and networking. The delegates started with an appropriately themed icebreaker ‘First or Worst Jobs’ which got people thinking about their own career paths and started conversation with other delegates on their tables. We had some very funny results including collecting eggs on a chicken farm and hand modelling, overallit created a great atmosphere in the room.
After this it was then time to hear directly form the Schools, Simon Fox, Principal at Flegg High School spoke first about the challenges and opportunities in education, referring to education as a glacier as its slow moving but ever changing. He touched upon the issues that teachers face with the curriculum as subjects such as coding are becoming more common they are looking to the business community to guide their teachings. He emphasised that trust and communication between education and businesses is important in both directions as we can learn from each other.
Following this we briefly heard from the heads of local schools. Five school leaders joined us on stage to give us a quick overview of how they work with the business community; Steffan Griffiths from Norwich School, Fiona O’Hara from St Nicholas House Prep School & Nursery, Kirsty Von Malaisé from Norwich High School for Girls, Gill Hipwell from Harleston Cluster and Peter Collins from Reepham High School. We had a range of topics come up including careers fairs, work experience opportunities, organising a symposium for Women into Business, realising the worth of your local schools and connecting to young people before they make their GCSE choices at high school. All speakers had just 1 minute on stage to speak to the delegates, despite the short time slot we got some really valuable information from the speakers.
Our final speakers of the morning was the Young Chamber Executive Committee from Aylsham High School, who were introduced by one of their teachers – Emmalucy Auber, who also is head of the committee. The Young Chamber gave an impressive presentation which was highly praised by the audience. They explained what a Young Chamber is, what they get up to in Aylsham High School and when they work with businesses. Delegates commented that it was very good to hear directly from the students and hear their perspective about what really works when connecting business and education and how they have been inspired in the past by businesses.
For the last part of the event we handed the reigns over to the audience to get their thoughts, opinions and feedback on careers fairs, work experience and generally how to connect with schools. During the 20 minute session we had all delegates talking to the schools on their tables about how to move forward with what they had learnt in the event so far. The audience provided their feedback on post-it notes on a board and by the end of the 20 minute session we had a board full of ideas and an audience full of ideas and discussion.
To finish the event, our host Matthew Hudson selected a few of the feedback ideas and got the delegate to elaborate, giving the whole audience a chance to record other people’s ideas and input.
To readmore about the Young Chamber policy campaign, click here.
