B&C Educational have had an exciting start to the new year. Nettl of Birmingham (nettl.com) have just upgraded their website (www.primary-school-resources.com) and it went live and Friday, so we are looking forward to a flood of new orders for our educational resources. In any case our partnership with Wildgoose Education Ltd (www.wildgoose.ac/) is strong and they have been instrumental in encouraging reseller sales for us.
We have recruited well for the next Gambia Study Visit in March with six schools being part of the venture and 16 teachers ready to travel. Many of this schools have recieved funding from the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms Scheme and in addition to furthering their partnership work with Gambian schools, we are trying to develop links with certain Senegalese schools as well. Some Senegalese teachers will be able to share in seminars, workshops and school based activities with us in The Gambia. We also hope to undertake a careful needs analysis for those Muslim schools who are now required to teach English, Maths, Science and Environmental and Social Studies in English. We have been working with a educational development centre called Amana with some of these teachers but we hope to be able to develop a more strategic approach to out continuing professional development programme.
Some of the schools in our informal network in the West Midlands have been successful in securing Big Lottlery funds to enable them to develop a global dimesnion to their communities. This will involve us in more training and consultancy, and may well enhance our resource sales as well.
So at the start of 2015 all looks positive on each of the three strands of our business, resource development, consultancy and the Gambian programmes, if only we had shares to sell!