Being Mayor is a wonderful experience. You meet lots of interesting people, learn a lot of new things and make lots of new connections within the town. In 2015 I was invited to the launch of Henley Business School and Huawei's HAINA trianing scheme.
Recently I got another invitation to Henley Business School and the launch of their partnership with TECH Education Group. It was an honour to be invited back to witness the start of this new relationship.
TECH Education Group is the largest ITC education provider in China. Together with Henley Business School they will co-deliver a programme that embeds MSc programmes and Huawei Information Technology certification training. Once students have completed the training they will be in possession of a very valuable expert-level qualification.
It was very encouraging to hear Minister Counsellor Yongli Wang (of the Education Section, Embassy of the P.R. China) mention how important creativity and imaginative thinking will be to the students who gain this qualification.
I cannot stress enough how concerned I am about creativity being pushed from our National Curriculum in favour of core academic subjects. I fear this is a short-sighted move and our students of the future will be poorer because of it. We need leaps of imagination and creativity to have the ideas that will solve the problems facing the earth today.
I am pleased that, as chair of the Cultural Education Partnership in Reading, I can help plug this creative gap until we get a government that realises how important creativity is to our future.