Tom Ravenscroft is perhaps the most quietly passionate proponent of a “skills” curriculum in education today – and if that rings alarm bells, keep reading. He was just nine years old when he set up a little production line making greeting cards. His mum, a speech and language therapist, suggested he sell them at village fetes, which he did. At 11, he offered his services as a car washer around his town of Marlowe in Buckinghamshire, soon “rebranding as a car valet” to charge a bit more. In the same year, Ravenscroft’s father, an auditor with BP, helped him decide which secondary school to choose by listing his key criteria, such as “IT equipment” and showing him how to weight them mathematically. A five-mile run was treated with similar foresight, with goals worked backwards over several months.

While it may sound poetic, Enabling Enterprise was not born in a flash of inspiration. Rather it emerged from my desperate attempts as a naïve new business studies teacher to engage a class of challenging 14 and 15-year-olds. Through my time spent with this class I became increasingly aware that there were key elements missing in their prescribed business course. Namely, there was no practical element, few opportunities for students to develop their employability skills, and limited real world application.