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Stephen Timms MPNorth West Education for Enterprise Conference |
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I'm absolutely delighted to be here this morning to get a sense of the new enthusiasm and ambitions in the North West region we've been hearing about which is very evident at a distance sitting as I do in Whitehall. I am also delighted to welcome the launch of the North West Enterprise Forum and to congratulate everyone who has been involved in bringing the Forum into being and everyone also who has made the time to be present for this important event today. Because the truth is that enterprise and education belong together. I'm a Minister working to boost enterprise and productivity and competitiveness at the Department of Trade and Industry, but until May I was the Minister for Schools. And in that capacity I visited in February some secondary schools in Washington DC. And I was intrigued; at one of these I walked into a classroom of 15 year olds, and enquired what they were doing and I was told that it was their entrepreneurship lesson – and they had a superb textbook which they were using on entrepreneurship. It was a regular, mainstream part of the school curriculum. We haven't really thought about it like that in the past in Britain. Of course we have organisations like Enterprise Insight and Young Enterprise and the Education Business Partnerships doing their excellent work, but I have still never seen a textbook in Britain for 15 year olds on entrepreneurship, and many children go right through their primary school and their secondary school without really ever getting much chance to think what its like to set up and run a business. But enterprise and business on the one hand, and education and learning on the other, do go together. On the one hand, business needs higher standards in education. Businesses need people to be equipped to as high a level and possible with knowledge and skills – and our businesses have suffered because we have done much less well on education than other countries in the past. Its one of the reasons people in businesses are about education – and that is a resource of goodwill and expertise and investment that education needs to tap into and take greater advantage of. And it's why it's such good news for businesses that we have seen such a sharp increase in spending on education in the last few years, and such dramatic improvements in standards too, initially in primary schools and increasingly elsewhere. Business needs education, but education needs business too. Part of the problem in the past has been that some young people can't see the point of what their education has required them to do. If we can build much closer links with work, then we stand a much better chance of keeping these young people engaged and enthusiastic about learning. And that aim is at the heart of what we're trying to do in our work on 14-19 which I was responsible for as schools Minister. Too many young people – young people and their parents - think of education as something which ends with GCSEs at 16. We have fewer seventeen year olds in education in Britain than is the case in any other OECD country except for Turkey, Mexico and Greece. We have to do better than that, and we can do. So with the 14-19 proposals we want people to think of what they will have achieved not by 16, but all the way through to 19, and to plan their post-14 education accordingly. 14-19 has been one of the biggest consultation exercises ever undertaken by a Government department, and the responses are being studied at the moment. Getting the linkages between education and enterprise right will be one of the key criteria for success in implementing the changes. Some of the Pathfinder projects proposed in the 14-19 Green Paper will start up in the next few months, and will test enterprise activities as part of the extension of work-based learning for young people. What we want is a culture of enterprise in every part of the country, so that even where in the past it used to be assumed that you would never get a job, even in these place people will feel confident about being enterprising and starting up in business for themselves – of course for their own benefit and the benefit of their families, but in reality for the benefit of their whole community too, providing employment and services and ambition. We tend to think of business as something that's big. That's certainly been true of the chemical industries, for example, here in the North West, where scientific genius has made such an enormous contribution to Britain's wealth. And we need that to be the case in the future, just as much as it has been in the past. But increasingly it has been smaller firms, science-based firms and others, which have contributed the most to the success of our economy. And social enterprises too. Yesterday, I was in the Rhondda Valley at a social enterprise called the 'Arts Factory' where they are planning the establishment above the Valley of a wind farm of eight turbines to generate enough renewable electricity to power six and a half thousand homes, and an income of a quarter of a million pounds a year to be ploughed directly back into the community – creating employment and providing services in an area that has more than its share of problems. Nobody has shares in that enterprise – nobody is going to become rich – but the people I met yesterday are unmistakably entrepreneurs, using the skills of enterprise successfully to tackle social problems. And I'll be visiting some more social enterprises today. And education has a key part to play in achieving this new culture of enterprise that we need. That is why, last year, as Professor Powell said, Gordon Brown, Estelle Morris and Patricia Hewitt asked Howard Davies, the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority to carry out a review of enterprise and the economy in schools and further education, looking at the age range 5 to 19. In his report Howard Davies pointed out that although there was evidence that young people's views of business careers had often been negative, current attitudes to entrepreneurs were much more positive and that running your own business was seen by many now as an attractive proposition. But whilst they recognised the challenges and rewards involved in starting and running a business, many young people appeared unsure of their own ability to rise to those challenges. So Howard Davies concluded that what was needed was greatly to increase both the opportunity and the quality of young people's participation in enterprise activities whilst at school or college. He made a number of recommendations aimed at providing a coherent package of measures to achieve that. The Davies Report was an important step in opening up the opportunities of enterprise to all and in encouraging a deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture. Work is now well advanced on a full government response to the report, aimed at ensuring that enterprise education activity not only prepared young people for employability, but also makes a real contribution to raising standards across education. We've heard what Gordon Brown said in July about extending enterprise to every secondary school. We have already announced that additional resources, rising to £60 million a year by 2005-06, will be made available to allow every child the chance to spend five days over their school career engaging in quality enterprise activities. We are also re-taking forward key recommendations of Sir Gareth Roberts' separate review on the UK supply of scientists and engineers. Including initiatives aimed at encouraging enterprise and financial literacy at a young age, through the promotion of science, technology, and mathematical skills as preparation for careers based on innovation and entrepreneurship. The UK-wide network of 53 SETPoints, Science Engineering Technology coordinated by SETNET, delivers assistance to teachers through a wide range of schemes, like awards and competitions, to encourage young people to take an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths by setting the school subject in the context of work. SETPoints also deliver the Science and Engineering Ambassadors programme, which encourages young people already in a science-based career to visit educational establishments to promote science and maths related disciplines as a good career choice. As well as encouraging the teaching of innovation and technology we also want to encourage innovative uses of technology in teaching. I am particularly pleased that Estelle Morris has been able to announce that the Government has met and exceeded its target to have 20% of all schools with broadband connections at the beginning of this academic year. The new technologies have a lot to offer in raising standards in education, and to develop their ability to be comfortable with the e-business environment which characterises much of the new economy. DTI will be working with DfES to ensure that integrated procurement for public services and regional economic development makes broadband available to many more schools and colleges over the coming months. But success for Britain in the knowledge economy and the development of a culture of enterprise makes big demands on the whole of the UK's skills base, not just at 14-19. Last month I shared the platform with Estelle Morris when she launched a national debate on how we can meet the skills needs of individuals, employers and the economy at large, the first step in the creation of a national skills strategy. About 25% of employers in the North West report internal skill gaps – about on a par with the country as a whole – so this is an urgent debate. It is based on three principles:
The DTI will play a full part in this debate. The skills agenda is very important to the DTI as we work to build scientific excellence and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship to generate higher levels of productivity and prosperity. There are particular and specific challenges in raising the levels of skill in the management and leadership of UK businesses, a point which has been underlined by the recent report of the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership which the Government set up a couple of years ago. So we need to ensure that the skills provided by the education system are the ones needed by employers and by individuals. That people are equipped with the skills they need to make their workplace more productive and innovative; and to improve their own employability. We are particularly committed to driving up employer investment in skills and training and encouraging businesses to sue skills people more effectively. We want to ensure hat more businesses are better informed about the choices and opportunities available to them and to invest in skills as part of their overall business strategy. We want more businesses to be able to communicate their skill needs to training and education providers – in order to drive up the quality and the responsiveness of training and education across the country. By promoting the importance of links between enterprise and education as you are doing today we aim to provide clearer pathways for life long learning and for individuals to develop their skills and progress to Further and Higher Education. We can boost business productivity by encouraging innovation. To move into new markets, to innovate and take full advantage of new and emerging technologies businesses need people with the right skills and the right approach to learning. So the theme that you are focussing on today – building the links between education and enterprise – is central to our national task of raising productivity and boosting competitiveness. On productivity, we've made some progress, but there's still a big gap between the UK and other compatible countries. Improving the knowledge and skills of young people about innovation – enterprise – entrepreneurship offers the choice for individuals to achieve more of their potential, but also for our economy and our society to achieve more too. We need a strong economy and a strong society – they are two sides of the same coin. So creating a positive culture for business and enterprise among our young people is a key part of what we need to do. For the individual, this is an opportunity for the development of talent and for potential to be realised. For the employer, there is the opportunity to play an important role in influencing the education outcomes which will be so important for future business success. And for Government, these links between education and enterprise are key to what we're trying to do in building a decent and modern Britain – in building the strong society and strong economy which are our goal. So I welcome this initiative and I wish you well for your deliberations today and for the work of the new Forum as it takes up its work. We do need all of us to be working together, and – given that – we can look forward with a great deal of optimism. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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