Focus
Consultancy is the educational advisory arm of the company Fenton and
Associates Ltd which is owned by Christine and Michael Fenton.
Dr Christine
Fenton is the lead consultant for Focus Consultancy and has
served the
tertiary education sector for 18 years. She has had many roles from
teacher and mentor to contract scientist, as well as senior executive
roles in the Tertiary sector including General Manager, Head of
Faculty, and Executive Director.
She is a highly motivated, experienced and
focused senior executive with excellent evaluation and analysis
skills. Christine is innovative and critical as well as being
approachable and able to bring out the best from people.
In terms of her philosophy she combines coaching with vision, working
towards identifying and using peoples strengths.
Christine specialises in educational leadership,
curriculum design and approvals, as well as academic systems including
quality assurance policies and procedures.
She has expert
knowledge of Tertiary Education Commission and NZQA reporting,
programme approval and auditing requirements. Christine also has expert
knowledge and experience of preparing for External Evaluation and
Review (EER) events, with a number of clients successfully achieving
EER category 1 status.
Two recent outstanding achievements include the design, development,
staff mentoring and successful NZQA application for the first secondary
school in New Zealand to offer a New Zealand Certificate in Study and
Employment Pathways (Levels 3 and 4).
Christine then wrote Green School New Zealand's successful application
to gain University Entrance equivalence for its High School Diploma
(Advanced).
Michael
Fenton is a multi-award-winning scientist, teacher, and teacher educator and education researcher. Michael is a highly regarded science communicator with a focus on quality teaching at a national and international level.
Michael is an expert in all areas of STEM teaching, having taught in all areas of science, mathematics, and digital technology from Primary school to Tertiary level. He is a highly regarded programme and curriculum designer
with plenty of experience in instructional design for face-to-face and online learning by distance at scale.
Michael and Christine were finalists in the 2015
Prime Minister's Education Excellence Awards - Excellence in Leading
category.
National List MP Chris Bishop said "I’ve been privileged to visit
the Open Polytechnic to see their online science and maths teaching
courses first hand, and I know how impressive they are. The best thing
is that the programme enables teachers to study while working, allowing
teachers to put what they learn online into practice almost
immediately."
Michael continues to innovate and share his low-cost solutions to engage learners in hands-on, authentic, cross-curricula STEM at school and at home. In 2008 Michael pioneered and researched the use of school Casio calculators as dataloggers using $5 Picaxe microcontrollers. His work has been used by others but they all had the same limitation. Autmated time interval recording was thought impossible until Michael discovered an exploit in 2025.
He still tinkers with animatronics and robotics, currently completing a working Lost in Space B9 robot as his mobile science lab and lab assistant!
Michael has
also worked with a number
of organisations to write and deliver workshops exploring assessment,
moderation, differentiated learning, authentic science and mathematics
teaching
strategies as well as the appropriate use of digital technologies and
eLearning / distance learning.
More recently, he worked with Christine, contributing to the STEM
content and curriculum design, Google classroom instructional design
and assessment design for New Zealand Certificate in Study and
Employment Pathways (Levels 3 and 4). He taught at the first Secondary
school in Aotearoa New Zealand to offer this NZQA accredited
qualification.
