Did you know that 2023 is the European Year of Skills? One of the key priorities of this focus on future-proofing the workforce is to ensure that ‘pupils, students, researchers and life-long learners [are] equipped with the skills matching the present and future needs of their ecosystems – particularly green, digital and entrepreneurial skills’ (European Commission, 2023). As such, at LIS, our careers education programme is zooming in on entrepreneurialism as focus for our grade 9s.
The development of entrepreneurial skills in schools has been the subject of debate in Europe for at least a decade (Jenner, 2013). The IB’s Core Programme and its focus on Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills – Social, Thinking, Communication, Research and Self-Management skills – implicitly sets the foundations for ensuring students develop the skills that lie behind entrepreneurship. This year, we’re taking the step via our ATL and Careers Education programme in Grade 9 to explore more explicitly what entrepreneurialism is and what it means to be an entrepreneur. In line with LIS’s values to ‘embrace our responsibility to make a positive impact on ourselves, each other and the world’, the focus is on sustainableand social entrepreneurship.
Over the course of the year, Grade 9 students will be working in teams to identify a problem which they would like to investigate and solve or improve, with the end goal of pitching their idea to a group of entrepreneurs, with the hope that the students might take their ideas forward in the future, beyond the curriculum.
Through the LIS Connect network, we are hoping to engage the help of the parent community to act as mentors to each group. This would involve meeting (in person or virtually) with one team of students three times before their final pitch presentation in May 2024, for approximately 30 minutes. The initial meeting would be to discuss their broad ideas and research, the second to guide them in developing their solution to the problem and finally to help coach them for their pitch. The involvement of adults who have had direct experience of the process of pitching (and/or tendering) not only adds a real-life, motivational element to the experience, but is of huge benefit to the students as they consider their future career options.
If you would be willing to help with this project, or have any suggestions to help improve it, please fill in the ‘Beyond LIS: can you help?’ survey and we’ll be in touch!