Welcome to the Make Your Mark’s Enterprise Insights where only the most interesting enterprise developments and stories are delivered to you fortnightly.
Real-world education and skills
The Government should improve its support for organisations helping to improve young people’s ‘soft skills’ – such as teamwork and leadership – and reform careers advice in order to encourage greater social mobility in the UK, according to a report by an expert group led by Alan Milburn MP. The report outlines key barriers that create career disadvantage, including; diminished opportunities for young people to ‘work their way up’, increased emphasis on extra-curricular activities by employers and low progression rates from vocational qualifications into professions. The Government is set to respond to the recommendations after the parliamentary recess.
Grit: The skills for success and how they are grown (The Young Foundation – pdf: 761KB)
The UK’s education system is ‘extinguishing valuable assets in children of all abilities’ and needs to refocus onto ‘SEED skills’ – including enterprise, as well as ‘grit and discipline’ – a new report by the Young Foundation argues. The report suggests that Governments have successively failed to address the importance of these skills and promotes a ‘four-pronged’ strategy to help solve the problem, including establishing a £50-100m ‘Learning Innovation Fund’ to pioneer new teaching methods, the extension of existing best practice and more support for early years education and interventions.
Creating enterprising places
Do It Yourself: Cultural and Creative Self-Employment in Hard Times (A New Deal of the Mind Report for the Arts Council England – pdf: 598KB)
The Government should reintroduce the ‘Enterprise Allowance Scheme’ – a year long allowance paying more than other forms of benefit to enable people to start their own businesses – that was established in response to rising unemployment in the 1980s, according to a report for the Arts Council. The report, highlighting that 41% of those working in the creative sector are self-employed, suggests ways to encourage more entrepreneurship in the sector to help people back into work, including better business support for creative entrepreneurs and a new prize for young creative entrepreneurs.
Enterprise education must not be sidelined by schools under plans to merge economic wellbeing with Personal, Social and Health Education - according to Enterprise Insight’s response to a review by Sir Alasdair MacDonald. Whilst welcoming the decision to make enterprise education statutory in secondary schools, Enterprise Insight suggests that to maximise the benefits of this move there should be more done to ensure that economic education is recognised in the programme, such as changing the name from PSHEe to ‘Personal Wellbeing’ and ‘Economic Wellbeing’.
In the media
The Government has launched a new innovation award called the iAward to ‘celebrate and recognise Britain’s most innovative entrepreneurs’.
The Federation of Small Businesses has called for a new Graduate Employment Scheme, encouraging graduates to intern with small businesses – helping struggling businesses and saving around £600 per graduate on the scheme not claiming unemployment benefits.
The BBC and Big Lottery Fund (BIG) have launched a major new initiative to match six UK villages with enterprising individuals to work together to ‘bring life and energy to the village’, called Village SOS. Make Your Mark is supporting the quest to find the six Village Champions.
The Secretary of State for BIS, Lord Mandelson, has outlined his commitment to supporting entrepreneurs during the recession, arguing that entrepreneurship should be a valid choice for everyone, including ‘midlife entrepreneurs, post-corporate entrepreneurs, post-retirement entrepreneurs, [and] fighting-the-recession entrepreneurs’.
The London Assembly and Mayor Boris Johnson need to focus support for entrepreneurs on more personal business advice, as well as easier access to finance and accommodation, according to a report by a Greater London Authority Committee. Acknowledging that entrepreneurs will play a ‘crucial role in London’s recovery from the recession’, the report suggests that the London Assembly should commit funds to the provision of mentoring support for entrepreneurs, in collaboration with the British Library’s Business and IP Centre. Enterprise Insight’s submission to the review is available here.
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