Duke calls in on entrepreneurs as young as four

The visit to Herringthorpe Infants, in Rotherham, yesterday allowed the Duke to find out more about an education programme which started in the South Yorkshire town and is now being rolled out across the country.

The Rotherham Ready programme was launched in 2005 to train teachers to integrate enterprise skills into all their lessons from pupils from the age of four to 19.

It was started after local employers had raised concerns about school leavers lacking enterprise skills. Now it is being adopted as a blueprint for training teachers and teaching children about entrepreneurship across the country.

The scheme helped Rotherham to be named as the most enterprising place in Britain two years ago. During his visit to Herringthorpe yesterday the Duke met a class of six and seven-year-olds who were tasked with setting up their own businesses for an activity based around the Emperor’s New Clothes fairytale.

The children were given a budget and asked to design dolls clothes, purchase the materials needed and then make them.

Nancy Cresswell-Hall, aged six, said: “The Duke asked us about our company, which we called Fancy Dress Designers. I was in charge of quality control.” Nancy and her classmates even did customer research before choosing what clothes their company would make. They were asked to buy materials without going over budget and each member of the class was given a job to do within the company.

The school’s head teacher Lynne Pepper believes that even if pupils are not going be to entrepreneurs in later life they still need to learn to be entrepreneurial. She said: “We need young people to understand literacy and numeracy but we also need them to have other skills. To be able to get on with other people, to be able to communicate and to allow themselves to be independent.”

She received Rotherham Ready training six years ago while she was the school’s deputy head. Since taking over she has been keen that all pupils should be entitled to an entrepreneurial education. Young people are encouraged to have the confidence to take risks and taught to have a “resilient mindset”.

Rotherham Ready’s project officer Catherine Brentnall, said: “Enterprise education in this country is left to chance. It is not a statutory part of the national curriculum, it is not part of Ofsted’s evaluation framework or teachers’ development.

“You wouldn’t expect children to learn to read and write with the odd day here and there and a reading week when they are 14 but this is what can happen with enterprise education.

“Our approach is to teach children about enterprise from the age of four through to 19 as a part of their education experience.

“Developing enterprising skills, attitudes and aspirations is a crucial element of a 21st century education and we feel very proud to have the chance to share what we have achieved so far in Rotherham with the Duke of York.

“One thing that came across very clearly was that he was really interested in what we were doing. He thought it was a brilliant idea to end the disconnection between business and education and to bring learning to life.”

Herringthorpe was chosen for the visit as it is a Champion School of Enterprise in Rotherham. It is the only infants school in the country to be awarded enterprise status from Warwick University’s Centre for Education and Industry.

During the visit the Duke toured an Enterprise Learning Market where pupils showcased their entrepreneurial work.

This included Daniel Frost, from St Mary’s Catholic Primary in Herringthorpe, whose ambition is to become the first Junior Apprentice candidate from Rotherham. The 11-year-old has run a successful business offering classmates and family friends a digital “Elf Yourself” service.