EXI courses were designed to meet the needs of those:

• whose talents ‘do not fit’ within traditional education, training and employment confines and limitations
• and those who champion them

In as little as 12 weeks, entrepreneur-interns develop a minimum viable product, a business canvas with bespoke, embedded support networks.

Here’s what a leading South Australian Education department customer has to say…

“In 2007-09 it was my very great pleasure to be introduced to and work with the Entrepreneurship courses developed by Louise Earnshaw. Working as a curriculum consultant in the Education Department in South Australia, I was on the lookout for structured learning experiences that could be used with particular cohorts of senior secondary school students to assist them to develop their ‘enterprise skills’ and to expose them to entrepreneurism.  (At the time ‘enterprise skills’ were thought of as particular generic skills akin to the Mayer Key Competencies of the late 1990s-early 2000s and the ‘employability skills’ promoted by the Business Council of Australia and Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry).  

In looking at EXI’s Certificate II in Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Skills, or EE2 for short, we realized we were dealing with a course that involves students in learning skills, competencies, understandings and attributes that equip them to be innovative and to identify, create, initiate and successfully manage personal, community, business and work opportunities, including working for themselves.  We also realised that the course could readily be delivered almost by any school teacher following some training and development.

We engaged a consultant to work with us and with Louise to develop a professional learning program for school teachers that would achieve three things:

·       increase their knowledge about generic skills, assessment issues, and how the skills are valued in diverse situations

·       enthuse them about the importance of students developing deeper understandings of their own generic skills, and being able to confidently articulate them to a third party (including in an interview, such as but not restricted to a job interview)

·       credential them with the Certificate II itself and, using a train the trainer model, train them to deliver the course to students.

Following the successful completion of the professional learning program with a group of about fifteen teachers from a diverse range of secondary schools, a number of participating schools set about implementing EE2.  They found that delivering EE2 is not resource intensive and is within the scope of what classroom teachers and schools are able to deliver.  They found that EE2 works best when the delivery mode is flexible, despite this presenting some challenges to school timetables.

The results were sometimes remarkable.  Some students who had experienced minimal success in the past started re-engaging with formal learning. Each student was continually encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, including forward planning and evaluation, all from a starting point that truly recognised their own specific interests and passions.  The culmination of EE2 is a ‘show and tell’ by students in the form of an ‘elevator pitch’ to an unfamiliar audience.  In many instances students demonstrated new-found (awakened?) confidence and were able to reveal an insight into the skills they possessed.

We found that EE2 was particularly successful with students who struggled to remain fully engaged with mainstream education for whatever reason.  However, we found it is also relevant to any student wishing to gain entrepreneurial skills, and is unlike most other ‘business management’ senior secondary courses.

In EE2, Louise Earnshaw has developed a vocational education course that assists schools to guide students in acquiring many of the capabilities that are at the heart of modern curriculum and 21st century life and work.  EXI’s Certificate II in Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Skills, and the other higher-level courses, has the potential to connect young people with learning and other opportunities that are beyond the school gate.”

Kym Clayton

6 September 2020