What's that got to do with anything?

I think Mintball is asking whether entrepreneurship needs to be taught, or can be.

Personally, I think there are elements of entrepreneurship that are part of character make-up rather than knowledge.
The few entrepreneurs I've met wouldn't know their 'rse from their elbow but can spot a deal a mile off.

Will these be genuine businesses providing "real life" goods/services or is it all a bit like running a classroom share trading game thing ?

I’ve found that a lot of these young people’s enterprise schemes are run by mildly successful or unsuccessful business owners who wouldn’t give young people their time of day if they weren’t getting paid by the government or the council to deliver such a scheme.

I'd agree with that. It's not about 'teaching' entrepreneurship though. It's about nurturing it, and giving those with an inkling that business may be interesting or appealing the opportunity to experience it.

That's what I meant, indeed.

Genuine, to a point.

It may have changed, but how it worked when I was in school was that a bunch of kids register their interest and are taught the fundamentals of how the scheme works. Those who remain, decide what aspect of business appeals to them; for instance are they ideas people, leaders, organisers, salespeople or accountancy types.

Lets say the popular class bigmouth is interested, he may well be a good salesman, so you'd appoint him as Sales Director. The maths geek might want to be FD, that kind of thing.

You then decide what product or service you want to provide. The year above mine at school bought a load of clock workings, and used the CDT facilities to make a range of wall clocks, which they then sold to family, friends, at school fairs and what have you. We bought a load of first aid items in bulk, and made up some first aid kits, which we flogged for a fiver a piece.

You have to raise money first, though, and you do that by selling shares in the business. The idea then is to use that money to create your product or service, and get yourself into to a position to pay a 'dividend' at the end of the project. Not sure if you can do this now, but we were also given the option of approaching the Midland Bank, who were YE's partner/sponsor, who would give out loans. Not sure what happened if your ability to repay was removed, but I suspect it was a very low amount offered and I also suspect that the loss of this money was probably expected and factored in.

You have to follow usual business rules and provide "accounts" based on real accounting rules. You also have to pay the equivalent of VAT to Young Enterprise itself, which I presume is how they make their money.

At the end of it, you have to wrap your business up and produce final accounts, a report and produce a presentation at a local competition, where you can progress through to town, area, regional and national finals.

It's certainly a challenge for the kids involved. I remember our MD being in tears when we didn't win our heat. It was a good opportunity to step in and offer her some 'comfort' but she was having none of it, sadly.

Salford (the club) used to run a scheme in high schools where Yr 10 (I think) pupils would set up a 'business' that would effectively sell the club's products with the proceeds divisded between the club and school.

I participated in Young Enterprise in year 10 of school. We really enjoyed it until our teacher was having a bit too much of an input into it and ended up essentially deciding our product for us, which made us eventually drop out even though we made a slight profit. It gave us life skills such as opening an account at Lloyds TSB and also using paying in slips, ringing companies to enquire about things etc.

If the teacher hadn't chosen the product and we'd had more of an input it would have been more enjoyable, but the practicality of it is enjoying compared to other lessons that we did. We might have been a bit too young to understand the full market and go out and approach people outside of the school (mainly targeting people inside the school was a mistake), so if we were to do it again now we'd probably have had more of a success.

Good luck with it!

McIver our metalwork teacher would have made a bloody fortune knocking out those hundreds of paint scrapers that he got us forging and sharpening every wednesday morning.

In fact thinking back on it, thats probably what he did.

Something that's properly structured like this can only be of benefit, providing that the kids do not take their lead from Young Apprentice. I find it totally immoral to watch young people attempting to emulate the avaricious, back-stabbing monsters they see on the adult version of The Apprentice.

Both were at boarding school and came from wealthy families. Doubt they needed any special courses on how to get stuff done.

I would tend to agree. You don't have to be a backstabber in business. That's just a popular myth, but one which makes for (in come peoples' eyes) compelling telly.

I'm not at all saying there aren't any backstabbers out there. I've been on the receiving end, which only makes me more determined not to be one myself.

So, to take this further: are you saying that nobody from outside such backgrounds has ever become an entrepreneur/businessperson, and such classes provide the same advantages as we wealthy family background and attendance at boarding school?

Only just seen this.

I'm not being paid to do this - it's entirely voluntary. The only money I would make is a return on my shares, assuming I put the customary tenner in, and I doubt I'd make any life changing sums off a tenner, do you?

It's up to you whether any of you want to believe my reasons for doing this. I'm doing it because I know I enjoyed it when I was younger and my business makes its money from the local community, so it's only fair to put something back in. There are no commercial benefits - it's just something I'd like to do.