The following is an article in the summer edition of Attain magazine, published today (Wednesday 15 April 2015).
Picture the world of business and you might conjure up images of a cut-throat workplace, aggressive negotiations and hard-nosed decision-making. A decidedly adult world, many may think. But business skills are increasingly finding their way into the education narrative as industry leaders call for better quality workforces – not just in secondary education, but younger classes too.
Young Enterprise, a financial education charity that works with pupils to help them start up small, temporary businesses has long been the preserve of senior schools. It is, however, starting to become an interesting proposition for prep schools seeking to expand their activities programmes. So at what age is it wise to get children involved in such a venture? Can they be too young? According to Young Enterprise, the answer is a resounding “no” as there are programmes to suit children from the age of four. St Andrew’s prep in Pangbourne became the first IAPS school to use Young Enterprise a few years ago. Its pupils started up trade selling hoodies, key rings and beanie hats in 2014.
Instead of finding it necessary to prepare the children for cold commerce, teachers found that the experience actually drew links between all the subjects and disciplines with which pupils were already familiar. They discovered talents they didn’t realise they had.
“Communication skills were demonstrated by some of the pupils by their ‘gift of the gab’ while selling their products and by others through their eloquence when reading their persuasive business plans,” said headmaster David Livingstone. “It was also interesting to note that those who may not have shone as natural leaders in other classroom situations, finally found their platform.”
Kirsty Stokes, the member of staff who initiated the venture, added: “Interestingly there was never conflict over the different managerial roles. Each pupil’s skills – whether they involved numeracy, creativity or organisational abilities – led them to choose a different role. Many surprised themselves after filling in the questionnaire that they were guided to managerial roles very similar to their parents’ careers.”
Anyone who has seen an episode of the BBC’s The Apprentice will be surprised to find out that children so young can work together on a business venture and be successful, let alone do it without conflict along the way. But perhaps that is the problem with our image of business in the 21st century, which programmes like The Apprentice perpetuate. All those helicopter shots of London skyscrapers, suited-up men and women marching across our screens with unspecified determination and the certainty of getting sacked if you are not up to scratch – or even just having a bad day. We all know that this is not exactly the embodiment of acumen and prowess in business, and we need to teach children what it is really all about.
Young Enterprise involves a wealth of cross-curricular links, with mathematics tally graphs for research questionnaires and calculations of tax and profits, English skills in preparing press releases and writing business plans, and both art and ICT in the designing of logos.
But the most crucial element of understanding business is arguably what lies at the heart of its process and purpose: money. As young children cannot earn their own income, they lack the ability to understand the concept of money and how to handle it. Even adults can find this hard to grasp, showing that one’s education in financial competency can never start too young. Giving children lessons in business, however, is an excellent starting point towards making sure they understand the bottom line.
This sentiment is echoed by Michael Mercieca, the chief executive of Young Enterprise. He said: “We realise the importance of early intervention, and as such we work with young people from the age of four up to 25. Our enterprise education programmes and financial education resources enable children to develop key skills such as communication, team work and resilience in a fun environment that will help them in life and as they progress through education.”
It is all very well showing children the expenditure equation and expecting them to understand that they cannot spend more than they have, but we all know from practice that the world does not actually work like that. People do spend more than they have. Frequently. Even more so in the world of commerce and any child who follows football will be more aware of this fact than we probably care to realise. The job of education in these matters is to ensure children know the consequences of over-spending and how to make sensible decisions regarding money. Building their own business from scratch and seeing the success or failure of it resting on whether the sums add up is one of the best ways to bring all of this into sharp relief.
Another key element of Young Enterprise is one we will all recognise from our own jobs: working alongside others toward a common purpose. This is something that is not adequately covered by sports matches, group work in the classroom or in any other part of school life, and yet it is a skill everyone is destined to need in order to find any sort of success in the workplace. It is a skill that most people do not realise has immense value until they come into contact with those who lack it. In this respect you could see Young Enterprise as a vital part of any school education, because as much as it draws from other subject areas, children learn skills that they simply do not get the opportunity to gain elsewhere in the curriculum.
Understanding the nuances of other people’s approaches to work makes up half the ability to communicate with them effectively, and children should not be protected from such facts of life.
One of the arts learned during the process of running these temporary businesses that is not addressed adequately in any other area of the curriculum is that of problem-solving. You can give a child a maths problem to solve, and whether they are able to complete it or not could be a measure of their aptitude for maths. But whether they can solve the problem does not impact on them in any other way. It is an entirely different capacity to workplace problem-solving where they would need to find an alternative solution if they couldn’t rectify the issue by straight-forward means.
When given the chance, children demonstrate their resilience when faced with their own unique challenges. They can experience the highs and lows of this process and what will get them through is their own ideas and the drive to make it work. The ability to find their own aptitude to deal with tricky situations is a gap in most primary education, but it can be filled by getting children involved in the world of business. We should not shy away from this concept as being too adult for primary children to cope with. They are capable of dealing with far more than we realise.
Hannah Webster is the communications manager for IAPS.
