We need partnership between all players, especially education and business Finally, we must commit ourselves as a nation to a championing approach that brings together leaders in business, government, and education. New Zealand is small enough for us to be able to quickly make up lost ground. But we need to respect our innovators, our inventors, and our idea-generators, people working on the leading edge of change. We need all our politicians to be looking forward, to have the strategic vision, the understanding, and the experience to make the knowledge economy a reality. Most importantly, we need an education system from which we can pull the skills that commerce needs of that system, not an education system that pushes unprepared students into the marketplace.
Education needs help to understand what business needs.
Without the assistance from business, teachers and schools will continue to design and implement course-work that does not prepare students for the real world of work. The education system must support life-long learning. Population trends make it imperative that both young people and people of working age are encouraged and supported to engage in lifelong learning. If New Zealanders do not seize the opportunities provided by the knowledge economy, we will survive only as an amusement park and holiday land for the citizens of more successful developed economies.