FSB urges schools to teach kids about life in business

All schools in Scotland should offer specialist courses in how to run your own business, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

Alongside calls to reform public procurement and business rates, the FSB is pressing political parties to give all Scottish pupils a taste of life in business.

The small business campaign group is calling on the next Scottish government to deliver more funding for enterprise education.

It argues that this help could deliver an economic and social boost in the poorest communities. 

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Andy Willox, the FSB’s Scottish policy convenor, said: “If we want more people with no history of enterprise in their family to become the business leaders of the future, then we need to make changes at primary and secondary school.

“Giving students a taste of running their own business has multiple benefits. Academic evidence suggests that pupils who participate are more entrepreneurial and more likely to start a business. But perhaps more critically, it gives young people an idea of life after education.”

Organisations such as Young Enterprise Scotland, Micro-Tyco and Bad Idea already deliver enterprise education in many Scottish schools, though according to the FSB there is no official data about the proportion of Scottish schools and pupils that are receiving this.

The last SNP government committed £300,000 to fund more enterprise education in schools and the FSB is urging the next administration to do more. 

The Carnegie Trust’s 2012 Enterprising Minds report, which looked at enterprise education in 17 UK colleges, concluded: “The respondents who had been exposed to enterprise education in and around their courses were generally more likely to think in enterprising ways about their own futures. They also found it easier to consider setting up a business in their own working lives or working self-employed.”

Geoff Leask, CEO at Young Enterprise Scotland, said: “Young people who have taken part in enterprise activity in education are far better equipped when they enter the workforce, whether working for themselves or for someone else.”