Tag Archives: Careers and Enterprise Company

 Can you help create business builders for the next generation?

Linking Education and Business – A New Approach

Continuing our thematic coverage of new ways to support young people and the education and training sector, we were very pleased to see the emerging detail of the Enterprise Adviser Network for schools in Norfolk and Suffolk. Members of the business community volunteering some time to support schools in developing their enterprise agenda.

This cross-counties initiative is supported by the national Careers and Enterprise Company and is delivered by Norfolk County Council & Suffolk County Council.

emailIcon4Contact the project in our region here:  CareersEnterpriseCompany@suffolk.gov.uk


careersEnterpriseCompanyButtonA new national programme is taking shape across Norfolk and Suffolk that aims to adopt an innovative approach to bringing business and education closer together. The New Anglia Enterprise Adviser Network aims to connects local high profile business leaders with senior leaders in local secondary schools, academies, colleges in order to helping to motivate and inspire young peoples’ career aspirations, to make a major impact on their work prospects.

Enterprise Advisers will be volunteer leaders from the Suffolk and Norfolk business community. Their role will be to provide strategic consultancy and advice to schools and colleges to improve employer engagement and careers guidance provision and thereby help bridge the gap between education and business, raise young peoples’ aspirations and enhance enterprise and employability skills.

Suffolk County Councillor Gordon Jones, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Education and Skills said: “We do need to increase the interaction between the education and the business community, making sure Suffolk school children have the skill set required to find work and prove themselves valuable assets to commercial companies”.

New Anglia Local Enterprise PartnershipMark Pendlington, chairman of New Anglia LEP, commented: “If we want to compete and win on a world stage we need to deliver a higher skilled workforce for our growing economy and for the all the thousands of outstanding companies, innovators and entrepreneurs that are already based here and for the many more we want to attract. We can help do that by placing business leaders at the heart of the education system, to inspire young minds when they are seeking out their future paths and looking to match their talents and aspirations with a high value and rewarding career.”

The New Anglia Enterprise Adviser Network is supported by five Enterprise Coordinators who will provide business leaders, schools and colleges with a professional service which includes high quality training, matching Enterprise Advisers to schools and colleges and extensive, ongoing support.

The network has been created with support from the national Careers and Enterprise Company and New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, working through its partners in Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils, delivering this national programme in the East.

Could you be an Enterprise Adviser?

The project is looking for enthusiastic business people across Norfolk and Suffolk to work with schools to help our young people understand the connection between their education and the world of work.

If you have the motivation and dedication to help young people find out more about the opportunities for their future career please get in touch…

emailIcon4 CareersEnterpriseCompany@suffolk.gov.uk

Content for this article courtesy of Suffolk County Council.

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We think there is a new energy abroad in education and training, sweeping the landscape to create new opportunities and outcome for a range of young people. Discover a couple of examples of this new delivery below…the horizon may have just go a bit nearer for young people who don’t seem to quite ‘fit the traditional bill’.

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Robert Ashton FRSA drives forward his Swarm Apprenticeships, in conjunction with Chris Perry, to deliver a new sort of enterprise encouragement and training.

Swarm can offer young people Level 2, 3 and 4 apprenticeship framework options, with the added zest of ‘…innovative enterprise training workshops which develop the mindset and commercial awareness of apprentices’.

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You can discover a comprehensive list of the integrated Swarm developmental workshops here. This impressive cast list is designed to sensitise and energise apprentices into an entrepreneurial, developmental and goals achieving mindset.

The Swarm team’s key focus qualification is the Level 3 Diploma in Enterprising Skills in a Business Environment, although the company does offer other opportunities too.

What we liked most is how this entrepreneurial flavour and admixture is seamlessly blended into the training programme for the individual, combining both the needs of the apprentice to perform well to his or her employer’s satisfaction, whilst at the same time creating the building blocks for a mind-changing mentality about what it is possible to achieve.

You can see how the next generation of mainstream Oxbridge business and political leaders are seeking to develop a social good from their careers, for example, in the 80,000 Hours programme. This Ashton led initiative caters for bright young people, we think, who may have fallen through the educational cracks or who are seeking a very practical, resource driven approach to learning and skills uptake to the benefit of business, society and the individual.

We highly commend the Swarm Apprenticeship approach to our readers. See more here.

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The second tranche of new activity that seems to be stirring in the East is the nascent Careers and Enterprise Company. This national umbrella movement, itself sheltering under the wing of Local Enterprise Partnerships for its delivery, is beginning to recruit Enterprise Advisers across Norfolk and Suffolk.

This new, innovative scheme seeks to engage schools and suitably qualified businesses in a new form of partnership, where the school benefits from the insights and experience of the employer in a ‘… network to create powerful, lasting connections between local businesses and the schools and colleges in an area‘.

It is an idea designed to see businesses helping school senior management teams to develop strategies which link the world of work to the curriculum and energetic adaptability of schools, maximising their local contacts and accelerating the context of their educational outcomes to the benefit of both pupils and employers.

Lord Young has described the Adviser role in this way…

I propose that Enterprise Advisers would advise head teachers and teachers on the ways employers can engage with the school, drawing on advice from key local partners, including those that offer careers advice. I would envisage that the Advisers are drawn from all sectors of the economy and not only restricted to entrepreneurs‘.

Whatever your sector or size of organisation, if you believe in the programme of connecting schools and enterprise, then a visit to the Careers and Enterprise Company web site will reap rewards, we are sure.

Connections and conclusions:

teachinggroupIcon6-copyHere at conversationsEAST we are keen to support changes in the educational landscape. We sponsor the Inequality in Education movement and tender them a web presence, and are establishing a Cambridge group to make the IETT a nationwide intitiative.

Similarly, we know that Fellows, like Robert Ashton and others are actively working with schools in the East of England too.

What we would argue for is a synergetic relationship between all these programmes of work, where employer recruitment, in the Ashton/Swarm model is also part of the options for employers in the Enterprise Adviser network, for example.

The one is not designed to swamp the other, but to add a richer texture to the offer of all. RSA Fellows can also add a powerful contribution to the development of the Enterprise Adviser network too, we are sure.

In simple marketing and recruitment terms, if I’m building a trusted network or list of individuals dedicated to social good, then lets share some of that trust and fellowship with others in the public sector, striving for the same aim.

Now that would be a Happy New Year!

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