Croydon student graduates from Dragon Peter Jones's school (From Surrey Comet)
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Croydon student graduates from Dragon Peter Jones's school
10:30am Saturday 24th July 2010
Croydon student Ashley Leyton-McIntosh has become one of the first entrepreneurs to graduate from an academy set up by Dragon’s Den star Peter Jones.
The National Enterprise Academy (NEA) was opened in September 2009.
The student graduated at a gala ceremony at Manchester City Football Club.
Mr Jones said: “I’m so proud of the achievements of Ashley, who through her dedication and talent, has proved the true value of enterprise education.
“Enterprise is essential to the future success of the UK economy and that success starts with young people like Ashley.
“More than ever, we need entrepreneurs to stimulate economic growth, whilst both big and small businesses need inspired employees to help their companies innovate, grow and develop.”
Student graduates from Dragon's school
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Fred1 says...
10:45am Sun 25 Jul 10
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First off, it's not obvious that Peter Jones is one of the two people in the photo. Ashley is a name which is not uncommon for both boys and girls.
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And it's not until the fourth paragraph that Peter Jones (who we have previously found out is the Dragon's Den star, and not the graduate) is quoted as saying "I'm so proud of the achievements of Ashley, who through *her* dedication" - as opposed to *his* dedication.
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And even then - the things that Peter says about Ashley are all things that a graduate could just as easily say about the Dragons Den star who set up the school in the first place. Think about it: has Ashley somehow "proved the true value of enterprise education" in a way that Peter himself hasn't? To my way of thinking, the graduation ceremony alone does not prove that. It's only demonstrated once graduates start subsequently turning profits on investments.
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But if it *is* fair to say that the graduation ceremony itself proves such value, then some might say that the founding of the school might also be an achievement on the part of the founder that the school's own graduates are "so proud" of.
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I suppose another clue is in the picture; the bloke's arm is around the girl, rather than the girl's arm being around the bloke. But you could just put that down to the fact that he's a bit taller than she is. I grant that that would be unusual, though, because the symbolic meaning of one person's arm being around another in an award ceremony photo is that one person is *presenting* another to us - so you'd generally expect the person who is presenting the award to have their arm around the person who is the recipient of the award, rather than the other way round.
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But we only know these conventions through our experience of other award ceremonies. Point is, I think the article and photo description is amusingly ambiguous.