YOUNG Enterprise (YE) Scotland has been named as a key delivery partner for the expanded Young Person’s Guarantee (YPG) as the Scottish Government looks to consolidate its plans to make Scotland an enterprise nation.
The organisation, which as Scotland’s leading provider of enterprise education has campaigned to embed enterprise learning in schools, will now work alongside the Scottish Government to put entrepreneurial endeavour on the same footing as volunteering and employment for young people leaving school.
The step recognises not only the need to provide a route into self-employment and running a business for ambitious young people, but also the value of nurturing entrepreneurial skills in schools for improving employability options.
Sean McGrath is the CEO of Entrepreneurial Scotland and sits on the Economic Advisory Council which helped shape the government’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation. Welcoming the inclusion of enterprise in the YPG, he said:
“Enterprise is one of the foundation blocks for the success of the government’s economic strategy. Today young people can look forward to multiple different careers over their lifetime and so including an entrepreneurial one is not really that difficult to imagine. Modern employers now expect their people to be able to bring a sense of entrepreneurialism to every workplace, so this is as much about Scotland keeping pace with a changing world as it is about opportunities for young people.”
Lynn Kelly, the partnerships manager at YE Scotland, is working two days a week with the Scottish Government YPG team to translate aspiration and policy into practice. Building awareness of the enterprise programmes available and collaboration, she says, is key.
“I will be leading a short-life working group to develop an action plan with the primary aim of making enterprise programmes easily accessible to the widest possible group of young people. I want to share the journeys of young people currently on an enterprise programme with all the key stakeholders – including teachers, the DYW coordinators in schools right through to youth employability services – and through that combined experience embed the right practices across the education and careers network.”
“Throughout May and June, we are taking a first step with a series of YE Scotland hosted debates on the future of enterprise education within the newly formed Regional Improvement Collaboratives. We are bringing people together to discuss the value of enterprise and the skills, from teamwork to good financial management, that it delivers within an education context. My aim is to establish a clear path for enterprise learning at the start of the next academic year.”
Celebrating its 30th anniversary since becoming a Scottish charity, YE Scotland runs enterprise and financial education programmes for all ages from primary school, through to further education college. Its flagship programme, the Company Programme, challenges sixth formers to set up and run their own business, which requires them to manage production processes, control costs and create marketing campaigns. Such ‘learning by doing’ has been the inspiration for many successful Scottish business people.
