head teacher pays tribute to Normanby primary children

Head teacher pays tribute to Normanby Primary children - 26th May

Normanby Primary school head teacher, Carl Faulkner says the reason his school is performing well is all down to the children’s enthusiasm.

The School has been working closely with Redcar and Cleveland Enterprise Team (LEGI) who together have created pioneering schemes to teach the next generations about business.

Introducing similar schemes throughout the borough, the enterprise team have developed a cutting edge system allowing Primary School children to run businesses from within the schools.   

Normanby Primary school currently provide 19 after school clubs all run as businesses. And soon there will be an additional eight classrooms and after- school space. But although the building works have been disruptive, Carl Faulkner says: “The children have been really good about it.”

The enterprise team have set up a chicken pen within the grounds of the school which the children run as a business. Their six adopted chickens affectionately named Pecker, Mable, Tick ,Tock, Posh and Pecks by the children, offer a hands on approach to enterprise which until recently was unheard of.

Pictured, are six four to five year old children feeding the chickens while teacher Jane Sparrow, head teacher, Carl Faulkner, and Redcar’s Enterprise team Education Co-ordinator, Ken Coulson, watch on.

Inside the school, a buzz of activity and excitement mounts as several individual enterprise groups of children display their entrepreneurial talents.

There is a school shop where children can be seen buying pens, pencils and other stationery.  The small team who run the shop in their own time, also have the freedom to order in other saleable items if they feel they can make a profit.”  Promotion of the shop is by displaying posters and announcements in assembly.

In one area, a food catering operation was in full swing where teachers were making hotdogs for the workers while other students were packaging  Sweets and popcorn for the forthcoming film club review taking place the following week.

In another section of the school, a large group of about 30, 10 year old students were enthusiastically designing a large scale marketing plan for their theme park launch.

The children were carefully analyzing expenditure of the whole operation using graphs and tables - taking into account, costs of electricity, staff costs, and profits over a 30 day ‘apprentice’ style project.

They used PDAs, which they used for calculating, designing posters and communicating with one another. PDAs and handheld devices have only recently been allowed for digital note taking which has increased student’s productivity by allowing individuals to quickly spell-check, modify, and amend their class notes or e-notes. Educators can now distribute course material through the use of the internet connectivity or infrared file sharing functions of the PDA.

One child who was involved in the marketing campaign, said: “It’s fun but challenging.” And teacher, Claire Alderson added:

“The creativity promotes and helps children to develop a range of skills  which will help them in later life.”
Venturing out to the allotments, teacher, Bob Nash was supervising a group of students planting seeds, raking and digging.
More fruit trees and vegetables are being grown which will later be sold and used as part of the children’s diet, promoting the importance of growing  natural foods and a healthy diet.
Several years ago the land was bare with nothing to be seen where now it’s a hub of activity with children enjoying working in the open air. And also with the help of the enterprise team and all the hard work of helpers from Coast and County and students they were able to build 300 metres of footpath, and dig out 16 allotments and 2 very large herb gardens.
The School has seen a lot of changes since Carl Faulkner became headteacher, in fact recently, one parent was so impressed with him, she nominated Mr Faulkner as Inspirational Primary Headteacher in the Evening Gazette's School Awards.
Anyone visiting the school will know why.