This report records important progress in centres’ use of enterprise in education as a powerful influence on young people’s learning. Across the centres visited, enterprise in education had made important contributions to improvements in the nature of the curriculum, the design of learning activities for young people aged 3-18, learning and teaching approaches and pupils’ creativity, attainment and wider achievement. Some of the key outcomes of enterprise in education can be summarised as follows.
However, there remains a significant challenge. It is to extend the impact and strategies of enterprise in education to achieve its full effect on all learners, and through all centres, as a basis for vocational learning for all young people. Schools have unfinished business, to extend and consolidate the influence of enterprise in education on mainstream learning and teaching. Building relationships with employers across all sectors of the economy will make a key contribution to Scotland’s Skills Strategy and help provide the improved vocational strategies recommended by the OECD report.
At least as far back as the early 1990s, research14 into the purposes and outcomes of links between business and education suggested the need for enterprise in education to secure its place in the "long wave reforms" of Scottish education. In the course of visits for this inspection, Inspectors found a high level of support for the concept of enterprise in education, confirming an important shift in the culture of schools and centres in Scotland. Centres and schools unanimously expressed the view that enterprise in education brought direct, significant benefits for learners’ experience, achievement and attainment.
The implementation strategy for Determined to Succeed had been to work with the grain of other key initiatives, focusing on integration within established mainstream school improvement approaches. Such a strategy meant that many aspects of enterprise in education, in particular the use of enterprising approaches to learning and teaching, did not achieve, or indeed seek, a separate and distinct identity. This approach raises issues relating to the durability of enterprise as a separate and discrete theme, the capacity of schools and education authorities to monitor and track its effects, and attempts to apportion credit for learners’ achievements. A narrower strategy, for example focusing purely on economic or entrepreneurial objectives, would have been much more visible, but it would have missed the opportunity for embedded, long-term influence in the curriculum.
It is an opportune time to consider how best to build on the achievements of enterprise in education, taking a more targeted approach in addressing the priority issues identified in Improving Scottish Education andSkills for Scotland. Part of the success of Determined to Succeed has been to support vocational developments and achieve influence, across the curriculum, which relates directly to employability. These are important themes which need to be fully reflected and sustained in current curriculum reforms, as encouraged bySkills for Scotland, to ensure that:
"…. Curriculum for Excellence provides vocational learning and the employability skills needed for the world of work…. (as).. the foundation for skills development throughout life."
Enterprise has too often been seen as an influence, albeit an important one, from outwith the mainstream curriculum. Activities such as work experience, work shadowing, mini-enterprise and entrepreneurial programmes, and a wide range of activities aimed at increasing learners’ employability and readiness for the world of work, have all been highly valued but seen as somehow tangential to the core business of learning. This range of activities for education for work and enterprise is a clear source of rich learning experiences, and therefore provides a very important reference at a time of curriculum reform. Enterprising approaches to learning are increasingly recognised as inherent within Curriculum for Excellence, and consistent with concurrent initiatives. Specific enterprise experiences and contexts continue to have the potential to achieve an influence far beyond the idea that they are merely "bolt-on" to mainstream educational experience.
Enterprise in education is being used thoughtfully and effectively to meet a broad range of learners’ needs. It will be important that stakeholders continue to monitor changes in the environment, including the evolving nature of the Scottish population, its society and its economy and the continuing need to improve Scotland’s ability to create and sustain new businesses. If enterprise in education is to continue to fulfil its potential, schools need to capitalise fully on the contribution of enterprise to Curriculum for Excellence.