Rod Aldridge: “Budget tackles some of the enemies of enterprise, but we must build an entrepreneur"

Following the Budget, Rod Aldridge has said that while progress has been made on creating a more entrepreneurial society, not enough is being done to encourage it at the classroom level.

Rod commented:
“In too many cases, entrepreneurship is seen as an add-on to the main school curriculum – a 40 minute class at the end of term or something assigned to Enterprise Week.  It should be so much more and has to become an integral part of day-to-day teaching.  
At the Aldridge Academies we aim to develop that entrepreneurial mindset in all our students, encouraging attributes such as passion and risk taking.  We seek teachers, in part, for their ability to foster these skills within their core subjects.  As well as inspiring future entrepreneurs, our approach has improved academic results and has served to re-engage excluded young people.

Teachers in general are not the enemies themselves but the system, and their training, simply doesn’t enable them to help their pupils adopt an entrepreneurial mindset.  A new approach to teacher training is essential or the Government will succeed in removing the bureaucratic barriers, only to find that people are not equipped to take advantage of the opportunity this presents.”