Enterprise Education GOOD EFFORT OR ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT?

Young children are amazing. They push boundaries, learn through exploration, experimentation and through interaction and sharing of experiences with their peers.

As a parent, I know this can be frustrating at times, but I also wonder at and celebrate the ability and willingness of young children to not only ask ‘why’ but also ask the more interesting question of ‘why not’? They could certainly be described as ‘gales of creative destruction’, not yet bound by societal norms, happy to challenge the status quo and change the rules

The challenge for education is to encourage and facilitate this behaviour throughout the entire educational journey, ensuring that educational frameworks are sufficiently flexible to ensure students don’t just focus on existing narrow definitions of performance and and success Instead, they need to be allowed to continually challenge, explore and fail, developing entrepreneurial mindsets and skills which will provide them with the resilience and adaptability so critical in successfully navigating an increasingly complex, turbulent and hostile world

We need to acknowledge however, that whilst there is an ever-growing number of young people wanting to pursue an entrepreneurial career, many still don’t where to start and many will do not fit into the current narrow definitions of what attracts support and/or funding. A position that perhaps does not align with the informed views of entrepreneurial champions such as the late Lord Young who was a big advocate of enterprise and entrepreneurship being available and accessible to all