EARLY years education guru Rosie Pressland of Pocklington is causing a stir all over the world.

The principal of Pocklington Montessori School, which scooped the Evening Press Business of the Year Award 2000, is jetting off for New Zealand tomorrow to address the World Forum for Early Years Educators in Auckland.

Her trip is being backed by the DTI and Business Link Humber which both applaud her pioneering work in setting up her Internet College for Early Years Education - I-C-Eye for short.

The revolutionary offering of an Internet-based series of courses was inspired by Rosie's horror that more than 60 per cent of the 215,000 people employed in child care in Britain did not have the relevant training, generally through no fault of their own.

It has captured the attention and imagination of many countries' education experts, particularly in New Zealand where she has also been asked to address the Faculty of Education in Auckland.

Next year she will give a speech to child educators in Phoenix, Arizona, and is also set to visit Australia, and will return to New Zealand for the world Early Years Conference for home educators, in Wellington.

Rosie Pressland's reputation as a leader of early years education has also spread to Australia.

An Australian couple who run the largest pre-prep and prep school in Melbourne visited her Montessori school in Bielby Lane, Pocklington, last December, on a fact-finding mission. Peter and Alison Horne were so impressed by the school and I-C-Eye that they decided to put all 25 of their teachers on to the Internet course, and subsequently changed their establishment into a Montessori School.

Updated: 10:24 Tuesday, April 02, 2002