AN initiative pioneered by schools in Furness is introducing younger generations to the world of business.

Speaking at a Furness Federation of Small Business event at Furness College last week, Caroline Vernon, headteacher at Victoria Academy in Barrow, explained how schools in the area were introducing children to local businesses before secondary school.

Introducing the event, chairman of the Furness Branch of the FSB, Phil Collier, said: “Collectively, the shipyard employs 8,300 people and that could rise to 9,000, but the SME sector employs three times that.

“What about the next generation of people coming in beyond the current crop of younger people? If we’re looking at investment for the next 30 to 35 years, that’s going to be ripe for people at primary schools in the area.

“At the end of the day, education is about preparing people for life and the real world and a big part of that is thinking about what you’re going to do when you leave school, college, university or however far you want to go.

He added: “For me, engaging with children in Years 10 and 11 is way too late. We need to be talking to children at primary school level, giving them something to aspire to and encouraging businesses to work with schools and inspire those children, that is what we have to do in this area."

Ms Vernon has been actively involved in engaging with local businesses to work alongside her pupils since 2008 and is now a co-chairwoman of Furness Education and Skills Partnership.

After beginning with large businesses, the business and enterprise educational programme now operates with businesses of all sizes across the area to help teach children valuable skills of teamwork and developing core skills through real situations.

The scheme also aims to enhance pupils’ personal and social development through problem-solving and working with others, and to provide opportunities for pupils to make informed choices and decisions and take responsibility for their own, independent learning.

Ms Vernon said: “Lots is known about the work we do linking business and education nationally, but not so much locally about how we’ve engaged the business community and local children into knowing how certain skills are used by local companies.

“At one of our events, BAE Systems talked to the children about the different teams that were involved in the creation of a submarine, told the children about each one and what that involved and what they did and why it was really important in building a submarine.

“The children then looked at the skills needed for those teams. So did you need to be good at art? Did you need IT skills? Where does someone with good communications skills need to be working? So we managed to split the year group into different BAE-style groups and we saw children become excited about this way of working.”

She added: “We’ve been along to watch a few business speakers with the children and we even took them to a marketing event for start-up businesses and while we were at that event the children came up with the strapline for our school, which we still use, which is 'Small children, big ideas'.

“We realised that the important thing here is not necessarily the subject matter but putting it into a real context, putting the children into the world of work or into college, and it had real purpose.

“Rather than us talking to children about how, if you’re good at maths you can become an accountant, that doesn’t mean anything to them, but if you put them into a company they can have a day there and understand that they can do it and can succeed in these environments.”

The school has now also appointed an enterprise adviser who can help to link businesses with the curriculum so that wherever it’s possible to have real learning opportunities for children, they can get more involved.