Catherine Brentnall is a skilled facilitator and expert in primary and secondary enterprise education, working with approximately 300 teachers and school leaders a year with a specialist understanding of social enterprise.

She runs Ready Unlimited, a social enterprise that provides professional development and programs nationally and internationally, and works for clients including schools, local authorities, and universities

She spent six years developing Rotherham Ready, an award-winning 4-19 school improvement programme which transformed young people’s skills and ambitions by embedding enterprise education in the curriculum and school life.

Catherine challenges educators to consider ethics and social justice in developing school focussed enterprise programmes – her approach to enterprise education is not just ‘business as usual.’ She also supports teachers to plan how to use enterprise teaching and learning methods to enhance the quality of teaching, learning and achievement in schools.

Catherine has achieved a Masters in Learning and Teaching, focussing on formative assessment methods in enterprise learning, and creating a framework for teachers of any age, stage or subject to develop more enterprising and entrepreneurial practice in their role and setting. Before working in enterprise education

Catherine had roles in social enterprise and education, and a previous career in journalism. She is a Society for Education and Training member and has completed a Fellowship Research programme with the Institute for Learning and Oxford University’s SKOPE (Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance).

She works in partnership with several national and international partners to develop research; her current interests concern: teacher development and school change, class and inequality and the framing of entrepreneurship in education policy and practice. She sits on the education committee of IPSE (Institute of Self-Employment).

Her work and Ready Unlimited are featured as best practices in the field of enterprise learning and teacher development, including the English government review on Enterprise Education in England, Enterprise for All, the All Party Parliamentary Group Report, An Education System Fit for an Entrepreneur, the OECD and EU’s partnership project Entrepreneurship 360, and various reports including Enterprise and Youth Unemployment: The Hidden Opportunity and Fit for Growth: Investing in a Stronger Skills Base to 2020.