The Independent is reporting that the Prime Minister has backed academy opened by star of ‘Dragons’ Den’ (Peter Jones to you and I). They report that Jones says that the difference between us and the Americans is that we say “can I?” where they say “I can”.
He’s right, Americans do have a far better attitude about being an entrepreneur than us Brits do. Although having seen some of the silly ideas that get feature on Dragons’ Den I’m not sure that his encouraging teenagers to be “a bit more gung-to about entrepreneurship“ is necessarily the right approach.
Rachel Elnaugh blogged about the news taking another dig at Jones:
While the cynic in me suspects this is as much about Peter’s desire to get the word ‘Sir’ in front of his name as it is to help budding entrepreneurs.
but adding the very important point that:
to change the culture in my view it needs to start at the beginning of a child’s education (and by that I mean from babyhood onwards)
Which is something I agree strongly with and with a young son the state of the education system is something that’s been on my mind for a while. The Independent reports in it’s article that the Government is putting £30M into Enterprise Education which after you take out the £4M going into Jones’ pet project leaves just £26M spread across the nations schools. According to Google Answers there are 3,367 secondary schools so that’s £7,722 per school. If the average school has 300 kids that might just buy a textbook for them - it certainly won’t pay for a teacher not even on a reasonable part time basis.
UPDATE: That £30M looks tiny compared to the £2 Billion extra spending on the military that the chancellor has just announced in the budget.
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
Hooray! at last someone cares. I have been teaching enterprise skills as an independent organisation in schools for over 10 years and in the last two years without any funding whatsoever. Most of the Local Authority funding is being used on yet more expensive consultants telling us what we already know. Good Head teachers are using up to 20% of their enterprise money from the standards funding on enterprising their students, the others pretend they have no money and built bike sheds. I am at the grass roots and get fed up with the hugely bureaucratic system. The employers want these skills and the teachers want us to teach them, the money is obviously somewhere but does anyone who can actually use it know where it is or how to access it. Event the LSC portal is so complicated that small dedicated delivery organisations simply have no resources to fill them in.