I have just signed up to be an adviser on the Young Enterprise scheme, that is run nationally in participating schools.

If you're unfamiliar, the scheme is an extra curricular activity that invites kids to effectively form a business in their spare time (within guidelines of course) with the aim of making a profit, which, after repaying 'shareholders' (i.e. the ones who stumped up the cash to invest in the first place) is usually put back into the school, or given to charity.

Personally, I think it's great - schools have a job to do, but I feel that a side effect is that kids are simply encouraged to toe the line and conform, which comes at the expense of nurturing natural business talent. Too often, bright and talented kids are channeled into further and higher education when they're not suited to it, and aren't even aware of the 'alternative' opportunities open to them, should they prefer it.

But I'm sure it could also be said that schools are not places to run businesses, and it would detract from their studies.

Has anyone been involved with Young Enterprise, either as pupil/student or as an adviser, and if so, what's your view on it?

I think it's a good scheme. It gets kids interested in business and thinking along terms of how to run a business. Bear in mind though that most of the kids doing it, are not doing it because they are interested in being entrepreneurs, but they want it on their UCAS form and their CV for when they apply to be consultants with the Big4 professional services companies! Still it does them good so I would support it.

How soon can they come around and sweep my chimney?

I hope you have a better experience than I did, the scheme was run by well meaning but self-important volunteers that think they know better than you, especially the teachers (in the one I was involved briefly with), the IT teacher I was speaking to was trying to tell me he knew my business better than I did!

problem is, the kids end up suffering.

Fair do's.

I did YE twice; once at school and once at college. The school one was good, the teacher was interested and gave her all, and the advisers were fairly high up at the Co-Op Bank in Skelmersdale, so the advice and guidance we got was good. It was voluntary too, so the kids involved put in maximum effort because they wanted to be there. We came a close second in the finals and were beaten by a slightly better presentation and a slightly higher profit from our opponents.

In college, however it was appalling. Firstly they made it compulsory at first, so no-one was interested bar a few. The advisers were from the local benefits office (seriously!) and the whole thing was badly run. I was one of about 10% of students who stuck at it, and needless to say because of this we got pasted in the competition stages.

So, you're right - it depends who's involved.

What school courses were available to the likes of James Dyson and Richard Branson?

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!