Onehunga High old boy gives $1m in shares to school

By AINSLEY THOMSON

An Auckland businessman has donated $1 million worth of shares to his old college, Onehunga High School, to help improve business education in New Zealand.

Tony Falkenstein also donated $1 million in shares to Auckland University Business School and the Unitec School of Management and Entrepreneurship.

It is not the first time the 57-year-old philanthropist has given money to help develop business nous in students.

In 2002, Mr Falkenstein founded the Onehunga High Business School - the first of its kind in the country.

The vision behind the school was to encourage entrepreneurial aspirations in high school students.

His inspiration for it came when he read an article about a Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report in 2001 which said that while New Zealanders were good at starting businesses, they were poor at making them last longer than five years.

The report in part blamed the education system and the lack of business skills taught at school.

Mr Falkenstein said he thought back to his days at Onehunga High School in the late 1960s and realised he had learned few entrepreneurial skills there or during his commerce degree at Auckland University.

"It took me a long time - what I call the entrepreneurial gap - to realise, 'Hey, there is a whole big world out there. You can be bigger than your little community'."

To help improve the business opportunities of future generations he provided around $300,000 as well as his time and contacts to get the business school up and running.

It now has around 250 students. Next year it is hoped a new NCEA level three curriculum in business entrepreneurial skills will be introduced.

"That would be the biggest success," said Mr Falkenstein. "That we would have changed the thinking on business education."

He said the school had opened the eyes of many students to the opportunities in the business world.

His latest donation of shares, in his company Just Water International, which will be listed on the stock exchange next week, have a forecast dividend of 8.4 per cent, giving each of the institutions around $84,000 a year.

Onehunga High School principal Chris Saunders said that it was the first time he had heard of such a thing happening at a state school and that the money would be used to help maintain the high standards at the business school.