Throughout our work with members and partner organisations, discussions surrounding metrics continue to dominate our thinking.  The EEUK responses to the recent KEF consultation (2019) and the ongoing HE-BCI major review have focused upon our call to recognise the role and potential of students, and a clear focus on building the eco-system and institutional pipeline (to counter any view that final outputs are the only key measurables). Currently we are considering co-dependence across measures to reflect the full pipeline, or a balanced scorecard to ensure that the eco-system is built and sustained.

It is this type of interconnectivity has been the drive for EEUK to write an open letter to Ofsted and host our next event focusing on strengthening the enterprise pipeline, picking up on a key issue that has been highlighted within the 2020 GEM report.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is an annual staple for most working in enterprise education, providing plenty of insight in each country’s economy profile and policy brief and its newest measure (NECI – national entrepreneurship context index) has highlighted school-level entrepreneurship education being the universally weakest measure.

In addition, GEM data indicates “more than 40% of entrepreneurs in 35 of 50 countries agree or strongly agree that their motivations to launch a business are to make a difference in the world” – something which is echoed in the Welsh “Youth Aspiration Research” by Beaufort Research and recognises Generation Z as being poised to become the most Entrepreneurial Generation of our time (2018:1).  These national and generational changes are also tracked within GEM, which in highlighting the UK, recognises the rise of the need of intrepreneurship as “firms are increasingly valuing entrepreneurship skills amongst employees”.

And if you are focused on skill development and building competence then your experiences of the European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework EntreComp are being sought, as your views and experience are needed to help to plan, design and create practical resources.  Your responses will help develop the most appropriate materials that will promote and enable the use of EntreComp in the future.  Survey: EntreComp360 .

AGCAS (the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services)  launched a special edition of its Phoenix journal  this month focusing upon enterprise and entrepreneurship as a prominent feature of employability.  AGCAS also released a joint report with HEPI which recognises the changing role of the careers service in an environment which focuses on graduate employment as an outcome measure of university. For those, such as Careers Advisors, who are working more directly with start-up and spin-out, there is an expectation that the government will increasingly be looking for a stronger business start story from UK institutions.

To update on KEF, Research England has published the KEF clustering and released the templates (March 2020) giving further detailed narrative statements to be included in the first iteration of the KEF and providing details of KEF workshops. As we enter this first year of KEF there is already speculation on the possible changes in future years (KEF 2) and when KEF itself will become related to funding.  Within this start-up focus, there is  a new joint-report from The Entrepreneurs Network and The Enterprise Trust which evaluates the funding options open for SMEs from Start-Up Loans and grants to equity crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending to make 7 recommendations to boost SME access to capital.

EEUK is currently inviting discussion on metrics that capture your practice, so have your say: alison@enterprise.ac.uk 

Alison Price, Head of Policy, Enterprise Educators UK