The UK government is to extend and enhance its delivery of enterprise education in schools and colleges, from primary to further and higher education, Enterprise: unlocking the UK's talent’,( 2008,p33)

Its objective is to develop an environment where individuals can better understand the risks and rewards of enterprise based on accurate information and not on unfounded myths. To achieve this FEIs need to develop a broader outlook and more positive aspirations.

Ofsted’s Developing Enterprising Young People Report (2005) found that employers and universities are looking for students who can take responsibility, people who are innovative in their approach to solving problems and those who can work effectively in teams. These are all by-products of enterprise education and employability skills. Colleges and universities see enterprise courses as a way of helping students see the practical applications of the subjects they are studying, ‘Enterprise: unlocking the UK's talent’, p34.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES)’s definition of enterprise education (EE), ‘enterprise capability, supported by better financial capability and economic and business understanding.’ has different implications for teaching and organisation of the curriculum. If enterprise education should prepare students to start or manage a business then it should also develop the knowledge, understanding and skills that are relevant for running a company or a social enterprise – skills closely linked to business studies. However, if its purpose is to develop students’ capacity to take the initiative in any situation, this could arguably be created in any part of the curriculum. Enterprise itself is about utilizing traits when outcomes are hard to predict, and which requires an ability to cope with change and the unknown.

Developing this within a college raises questions highlighted in a speech by Phil Hope, the Skills minister: ‘Teaching enterprise is not an easy thing for teachers to do ...It requires teachers to teach differently – sometimes to back off, to allow their students to take risks, and perhaps to fail a task. And it means that school leaders need to see any such failure not as a failure on the part of the teacher, but as part of the student’s development.’ (Hope, 2006)

Dr Jacek Brant of the University of London writes about enterprise education as a combination of:

• enterprise as teaching entrepreneurship

·      generic project development

·      development of personal ‘enterprising’ dispositions, such as creativity, problem solving, and flexibility.

http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/teaching-enterprise-or-enterprising-teachers-1774

The Office for Standards in Education (UK) (Ofsted) guidance suggests that successful enterprise education requires ‘an enterprising learning environment in which students are encouraged to take the initiative with teaching in the style of an enterprise process that is akin to project working.’ http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/teaching-enterprise-or-enterprising-teachers-1774

This ‘environmental’ argument highlights the confusion and difficulty faced by FEIs. How can colleges begin to recognise, monitor and record attributes and attitudes such as ‘creating and implementing new ideas, handling uncertainty and responding positively to change’?

Opportunities come from changes in the environment and entrepreneurs

are good a seeing patterns of change. It may be that those who are drawn towards enterprise will be better at diversifying the curriculum to include enterprise education and that it is these, once identified, whom will be instrumental in the change.

The entrepreneur is constantly looking at everything from different angles and seeing resources combined in different ways to address different needs. For the entrepreneur, everything is variable and nothing is fixed, assumptions exist only to be challenged. (Fred Kofman's principles of Double-Loop Accounting in Senge [1998:292], sums up the typical nature of Entrepreneurial assumption questioning.)

Where enterprise education is taught well, not only will teaching and learning styles reflect an innovative, creative and open-ended culture, but all members of the community will feel equally free to generate and develop their ideas whether they result in a successful outcome or not. We must not forget that entrepreneurs are out there pushing the boundaries and changing the world, it is inevitable that they will make mistakes.

The entrepreneur sees failure as a temporary set-back, an investment in education, and an opportunity to learn and to do better next time. Winston Churchill summed this up when he said ‘Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm’. http://www.quotesdaddy.com/quote/280962/winston-churchill/success-is-the-ability-to-go-from-one-failure-to-another

Fear of failure is clearly linked to the extent to which people are risk adverse. The European Commission Flash Barometer found that around 43 per cent of people in the UK compared with 19 percent in the US believe a new business should not be created if there is a risk that it might fail. Enterprise: unlocking the UK's talent’,( 2008,p18)

There is clear evidence that risk aversion is based on misconceptions about the risks inherent in starting a business. ‘People’s fear of failure and their perceptions of their own potential to be enterprising, affects

their assessment of the costs and benefits of entrepreneurship.’ Enterprise: unlocking the UK's talent’,( 2008,p18)

Role models or mentors can shape what people understand in terms of the opportunities and risks in enterprise. They are key in influencing whether someone who is capable of starting an enterprise actually does so and a enterprise education should also provide suitable role models, especially for young people and for those in communities where enterprise is not the norm. A lack of contact with suitable role models is linked to issues around enterprise inequalities and why certain parts of the population do not start up in business. Enterprise: unlocking the UK's talent’ (2008,p30)

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pitra lundy