Bright Sparks

9 Jan 2015 01:08 PM

First Minister announces £327k for enterprising schools.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will later today announce a further £327,000 for enterprising schools to help realise the Scotland CAN DO ambition and encourage entrepreneurial sparks from Scotland’s young people.

Ms Sturgeon will make the announcement in a speech at an event to business leaders and industry chiefs in Glasgow tonight and is expected to say that Scotland’s schools, colleges and universities have a crucial role in shaping the next generation of Scotland’s intelligent, innovative and inventive entrepreneurs.

Speaking ahead of the Entrepreneurial Spark event, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, said:

“The Scottish Government recognises the key role of entrepreneurial activity in delivering sustainable economic growth and we are committed to raising aspiration towards enterprise and facilitating the growth of entrepreneurial businesses. Scotland CAN DO is our national statement of intent towards becoming a world-leading entrepreneurial nation.

“I am delighted to announce £327,000 for the Enterprising Schools Project; a joint project led between Education Scotland and the project partners, delivering vital initiatives aimed at developing an entrepreneurial mind-set in our young people.

“What we want to do, is to ensure that future generations of Scots have every encouragement, support and advice that they need. That’s not something government can do on its own, it’s a shared endeavour. All of us, in the public sector, the third sector and the private sector must continue to do what we can to promote entrepreneurship and ensure our nation realises its potential.”

Geoff Leask, Chief Executive of Young Enterprise Scotland, said:

“The Enterprising Schools Project will develop a collaborative approach to ensuring that our young people in Scotland can benefit from an enhanced entrepreneurial mind-set and improved enterprise skills. By working together with the support of the Scottish Government, we will contribute towards raising the attainment of young people.”

Pamela Marshall, an alumni of Young Enterprise Scotland and now a business owner, said:

“Working with Young Enterprise Scotland at school age certainly gave me the confidence, new abilities and the best resources available to focus my sights on running my own business one day. That vision is now a reality."

Notes To Editors

The SG has invested in several initiatives aimed at young people to ensure that they are networked, inspired and supported in reaching their full potential as entrepreneurs.

Enterprising Schools

Two immediate outcomes will be realised through the Enterprising Schools initiative.

The first, and core, is the creation of a robust framework through which schools can be awarded a ‘star-rating’ of entrepreneurial activity. This will be co-developed amongst external partners and educational professionals and ensure that mind-set, continuing learning and values-based business are central themes. It is intended that this will be a peer-to-peer process in order to ensure further buy-in. This framework will be supported by a web resource making its content available to all schools across Scotland and will act as a focal point extolling to importance of entrepreneurial learning.

The second will be direct support to 7 exemplar schools to work with a range of entrepreneurial-learning delivery partners. They are:

The purpose of this is to create exemplars for other schools to model themselves upon and accelerate a peer-to-peer support model.

The project includes bringing together five different providers delivering products to support the inclusion of enterprise in schools. Each provider will deliver an element with Young Enterprise Scotland operating as the full time project manager.

The overall outcome will be to amplify the impact of the numerous providers of entrepreneurial learning. It draws these individual actors into a collective-impact approach and will provide an effective ‘grouping’ into which the core values and messages of Scotland CAN DO can be communicated.

Scotland CAN DO framework was launched in November 2013 which was the result of over a year of co-development with partners across the public, private and third sectors. Within, it set out the shared priority themes for action towards Scotland become a world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation.

Further details on Young Enterprise Scotland can be found here: http://www.yes.org.uk/

Further details on the Scotland Can Do framework can be found here:http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0043/00438045.pdf