Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Education in Schools and Colleges: Insights from UK Practice

Abstract

The Paper pragmatically reviews progress in the field of Schools and Colleges Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education in the UK since the 1980s. It utilises a substantial degree of experiential knowledge based largely upon the work of the Enterprise Education Unit at the Durham University Business School from 1985 through to the early years of this century. It examines some of the key issues confronted from this experience which still appear to be highly relevant including: - the policy rationale for the initiatives in this area - the most appropriate enterprise/entrepreneurial concept to be derived from this rationale - the related desired outcomes from the process and associated inputs - the pedagogical challenges linked to this - teacher skills and ownership related to embedding enterprise in the curriculum - the relationship of the concept to wider educational goals and practice (raised in any embedding process) - where in the curriculum enterprise should be placed and how it might be integrated - the possibility of progression from primary to secondary to further to higher education - whether the models should be different for different groups of students in the system - possible forms of evaluation and modes of assessment. It concludes with a proposal as to how to deal with some of the more contentious issues relating to the embedding of Entrepreneurship/Enterprise Education in the school and college system.