Editorial

Citation

Holden, R. (2005), "Editorial", Education + Training, Vol. 47 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2005.00447aaa.001

Editorial

This week (15-19 November) has been Enterprise Week. The first of its kind in the UK, the initiative is designed to encourage young people to put their entrepreneurial skills into action whether by setting up their own business, forming social enterprises, or through developing their ideas within their existing organisations. Trying to get into the swing of things I asked my 16 year old son what he understood by terms like enterprise and entrepreneur. “I guess someone like that dodgy bloke in Blackpool” was his reply. For readers unfamiliar with the BBC TV series Blackpool “that dodgy bloke” is someone called, coincidentally, Ripley Holden. Ripley owns and runs an amusement arcade. He has plans, most of which appear to entail illegal financial dealings, to open the first casino-hotel in the town. His pedigree is the school of “hard knocks” and the “university of life”. But, he is successful, appears to make a lot of money, and sends his 16-year-old son to private school so that he can go to university and get a “proper” job. I suspect the cultural and occupational stereotypes played out in Blackpool are why we need Enterprise Week.

The academic-vocational divide in education is alive and well in the UK but is such a nonsense. Access to read medicine requires the highest grade A levels but what could be more “vocational” than studying medicine at university? But, perceptions of the implications of following a vocational route through education remain stubborn and divisive. The recently published Tomlinson Report (www.14-19reform.gov.uk) has addressed the problem. Tomlinson sets out a vision for a unified framework of 14-19 curriculum and qualifications. According the Working Group the proposed Diploma offers clear and transparent pathways through the 14-19 phase and progression into further and higher learning, training and employment; pathways that will be valued by employers and HE; and that will motivate young people to stay on in learning after the age of 16. I am not optimistic, for two main reasons. The Report seems overly keen to respond to the voice of the employer and, secondly, I suspect a fudge will take place resulting in the new structure effectively being strapped by a perceived need to maintain the traditional examination routes of GCSE and A level within the Diploma. This takes me back to Ripley Holden, or rather to enterprise and entrepreneurship. At the heart of enterprise education and training is surely the business of learning rather than the learning of business. Increasingly we cannot anticipate the labour market of five years hence let alone what it will look like in ten or 15 years’ time. Employers tend to give very confusing signals about what exactly it is they want from the education system. Certainly what employers think they will need is not necessarily what they will really need. Enterprise education and training is not about making existing industry and commerce more efficient. It is about different ways of thinking, innovation and managing change. Enterprise in the curriculum, implemented well, should encourage creativity, imagination and critical thinking; vital skills for the world of work and indeed any dimension of adult life,

Supporters of Tomlinson may claim that in the UK we are about to “turn the corner” in respect of bridging the “academic-vocational’ divide. I am not so sure. I am, however, wholly convinced that both Ripley’s son and mine, need quality enterprise and entrepreneurship education to be at the heart of their curriculum; not just at 16 but at 18 and at 21 and so on. Perhaps in this way we can short-circuit the somewhat sterile debate about “vocational” versus “academic” routes in education, neatly side-step the somewhat confused rhetoric of the employer, and begin to develop and foster a genuinely lifelong curriculum for our young people.

Richard HoldenEditor, Leeds Business School, UK