Why 'Enterprise Education'?

Enterprise education works when students use real-life situations to enhance their entrepreneurial skills, supported by better financial, economic and business understanding. It can help raise aspirations and develop valuable skills for both higher education and employment. Enterprise opportunities can challenge the most able students, as well as enhance a range of curriculum subjects, and drive up standards as part of the school improvement agenda.

How does it help students and business?

Ofsted report that pupils are motivated by enterprise-based learning. They enjoy being given the autonomy to tackle relevant problems, take responsibility for their own actions, engage in real issues and evaluate the outcomes of their decisions.

Business strongly supports the acquisition of entrepreneurial attributes as an important factor in developing a skilled workforce and a dynamic economy.

How do Edexcel qualifications help students and enterprise?

We are building our current provision for enterprise education and strengthening our qualifications and resources. The most recent example is ‘Business Success’, a high-quality business game developed with Pixelearning. Trident, with their expertise in enterprise education, will also help us meet the needs of young people.

We currently offer:

• enterprise units within  BTEC entry level Skills for Working Life
• BTEC Level 2 Award in Preparing for Enterprise
• a pilot GCSE in Business, which has enterprise at its core - the core unit can also be taken as a short course
• a wide range of GCE and BTEC Business courses, including DiDA, which feature enterprise
• a BTEC qualification for the Young Enterprise Graduate programme.

What is Enterprise Week?

Enterprise Week is an annual UK-wide week of activities that inspire people in their teens and twenties to be enterprising - to turn ideas into something real.

Visit www.enterpriseweek.org for further details.

How is Edexcel getting involved?

Throughout Enterprise Week, students studying Edexcel’s GCSE in Business Studies at schools around the UK will be playing a game called Business Success in a virtual 'league'.

The winning student will win an iPod for themselves and a copy of the game for their school.  One copy of the game enables teachers to give their students unlimited access for one year.

What is Business Success?

The Business Success game covers a three-year life cycle of a product, addressing subjects such as Finance, Marketing, Operations and External Influences. It is a strategy game that will help to get students to look at how they place the different aspects of the subject and form the basis of discussion and learning.

It has been designed for Level 2 business students, and would suit anyone following a GCSE, Applied GCSE, BTEC First or equivalent qualification.

For more information on Pixelearning and gaming in schools, please visit www.pixelearning.com