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Become a global business chief while at school
Date: 27 Jan 2012
International trading, managing shares and fiercely chasing profit are, believe it or not, all activities for some UK schoolchildren. But the majority are emerging from the cosy arms of education without even the business or financial basics.
Young Enterprise is a business and enterprise education charity that has been making real-life business experience a reality for the younger generation. And more than that, it has been campaigning for the Coalition Government to make business and entrepreneurship education compulsory.
NatWest and Citi were among 188 companies and businesses that have backed the Young Enterprise Charter campaign. The campaign has been warning against the government's pressure on schools to focus education into core academia and away from softer 'real-life' skills.
In a recent Young Enterprise poll 75 per cent of blue-chip firms said schools gave young people the wrong skills for work.
The survey respondents were drawn from the charity's corporate supporters, including some of Britain's biggest employers such as Cadbury, HSBC, BT, Citi, Santander and the Chartered Institute and Marketing. It comprised more than 700,000 employees and members.
Out of the 29m employed people in the UK, the sample represented 2.4 per cent of the economy. The responses criticised the government for downplaying enterprise education in favour of narrow, purely academic knowledge and exams.
According to the poll, 59 per cent felt the education system was poor at developing entrepreneurial skills and 64 per cent believed financial education was also poor. Business education was 'very important' in schools, according to 89 per cent of respondents.
Catherine Marchant, acting chief executive of Young Enterprise, said: 'It is about an understanding and an awareness of what business is and why it is needed in terms of the economy. Business has a strong place in communities and the quality of employees is crucial to the strength of them.' With the previous Labour government, business learning was core to various parts of the curriculum. The Coalition Government is adopting a different approach. Its aim is to focus on core skills and provide schools with the flexibility of introducing other areas of learning.
Ms Marchant said: 'It is very admirable in theory but those core academic subjects are what the schools are going to be tested on so they will focus on those rather than other subjects, such as enterprise learning. So it kind of contradicts itself.
'The business community is saying that young people are not coming out with those real practical soft skills, only academic learning.'
In the main, the many voices shouting out about this issue have not suggested entire courses be drastically dedicated to business and financial education. But with increasing government pressure on schools to deliver on academia, and academia only, clearing out even a small space to build in the non-compulsory basics is unlikely to be a priority for most.
Financial Adviser
For more information, please contact: paul.eastham@young-enterprise.org.uk.
