Business Education Partnership
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What is the Business Education Partnership?
A new partnership between companies, peak business associations, employee organisations, and education institutions, was launched in Wellington on 16 November 2009 by Education Minister Hon Anne Tolley. Initiated by Asia:NZ, the Business Education Partnership (BEP) aims to encourage schools to prepare young New Zealanders for a future with the Asian region by increasing the amount of Asia-related material included in the curricula of New Zealand schools.
The organisations signed up to BEP cover a wide range of influential entities that play a leading role in the New Zealand economy. Click here for a full list of partners. Asia:NZ Chairman Hon Philip Burdon explained why they signed up in an opinion piece in the Sunday Star-Times.
Asia:NZ executive director Dr Richard Grant, citing newly commissioned research on the lack of focus on Asia in New Zealand schools, says: “We need greater emphasis in education on the Asian region to prepare young New Zealanders for a world that’s very different from the one we grew up in.” View full report on this research, launched on 16 March 2010.
“It is an urgent call for the New Zealand public and educationalists to think deeply about how we prepare our young people for a future increasingly dominated by Asian economies,” Dr Grant added.
The declaration, in setting out the motivations behind the initiative, notes that understanding what is happening in Asia is the key to New Zealand’s future: “Building our knowledge of Asia, its cultures, its languages and its peoples, is a priority task for our education system, so that New Zealanders can become more informed about the region and better equipped to deal with it.”
The launch was accompanied by the release of the New Zealand Curriculum and Asia Guide (PDF). The guide includes school stories and comments from principals, teachers and students already engaging with Asia and Asian communities as well as a series of questions to trigger discussion in schools about how to become more Asia Aware.
This initiative is being championed by the Action Asia Advisory Group, a representative group of New Zealand business leaders, for which Asia:NZ is the secretariat.
Read more:
Preparing young New Zealanders for Asia, an opinion piece by Asia:NZ Chairman Hon Philip Burdon, published in the Sunday Star-Times on 15 November 2009
