Blog from Unloc’s Managing Director Hayden Taylor
“Global Entrepreneurship Week is a celebration of entrepreneurs, self-employment and all those that chose to pursue a career centred around solving problems.
But there is a far more pressing priority for us in the UK this GEW – and that’s reminding the Government that our education system needs to do a much better job of building entrepreneurial mindsets in young people.
Our national curriculum at present is all too often centred on regurgitation of information, rather than the development of mindset, attitudes and skills – the bedrock of entrepreneurial culture.
Careers leads and hardworking teachers are doing their best to build skills building opportunities into the academic year; but we need a far more radical shift in curriculum build and intention to better prepare young people for today’s economy.
An entrepreneurial mindset is about creative problem solving, resilience, creating a sense of purpose, delivering value – all the attributes that the World Economic Forum predicts will become most critical in the next five years against a backdrop of ongoing globalisation, implementation of automation and the fight against climate change.
It feels more pressing now than ever before, as the UK economy tries to reimagine itself post-Brexit and remind the world of its competitive edge as a largely service-driven economy.
Despite that, the British national curriculum still has too little space for the intentional development of entrepreneurial skills and our accountability system pushes schools and colleges to focus on grade outcomes, rather than how ready young people really are for the VUCA world we live in.
Businesses too have a role to play in advocating for a more radical overhaul of the curriculum. We are too often stuck in this cycle of ‘businesses can’t get the young people with the right skills’ and young people saying ‘we can’t get the experiences to get the skills’.
I want to see businesses in the UK more loudly and proudly advocating for a pivot in the way we deliver education – and I want to see them more proactively engage in shaping the way forward.
So, this Global Entrepreneurship Week, let’s remind Government that this has the potential to be more than celebrating entrepreneurs – but a wake up call for our government to imagine a more entrepreneurial education system.”
Hayden Taylor, Managing Director at Unloc
