On Tuesday 15th May an Employability Symposium was hosted at Advance HE in York and provided an opportunity to profile an enterprise and entrepreneurship education framework developed last year by a range partners including IOEE and SFEDI.  The symposium offered a space within which to share experiences and discuss contemporary practice in enterprise education and employability and begin to craft a principled and evidence formed approach to devising subsequent support and guidance for change with regards to enhancing enterprise for employability in higher education.

The Symposium provided an opportunity for educators and employability professionals to reflect on practices and recent developments within their institutions and across a number of subject discplines ranging from biological sciences and mechanical engineering to music and dance. Across the range of speakers, there were a number of reoccurring themes and messages, particularly in terms of the need to build resilience, self efficacy, confidence and agility in our students to ensure they are equipped to survive and thrive in their future careers.

Stuart Norton, Academic Lead Employability, Advance HE commented “While debates will continue to be ongoing around (incomplete) LEO data, the value of degrees, the measure of what “success” is - through to whether data can really tell us what is going on in universities - the reality is that with increasing numbers in the graduate labour market they need to be able to compete – and let’s not forget those that wish to purse self-employment as a viable option.”

Leigh Sear, CEO of SFEDI was the keynote speaker at the Symposium. Leigh reflected on what we know about enterprise and entrepreneurship education and identified a number of key areas of ‘need to know’ in terms of ensuring enterprise and entrepreneurship makes a difference. As part of his keynote, Leigh presented a framework recently co-created by Advance HE, ISBE, EEUK, IOEE, SFEDI and the QAA, explaining how it  can be used to assist in addressing the key issues facing enterprise and entrepreneurship educators in providing an effective education experience and making a difference for different groups of internal and external stakeholders.

The framework provides a resource to connect the journey of the learner, to the role of the educator in facilitating the education experience and, in turn to managers with responsibility for processes and practices within the institution that enable the enterprise and entrepreneurship

educator to deliver an effective experience to internal and external stakeholders.

The framework can be used in a number of ways including:

• Identifying the key “how to’s” associated with  the  design, delivery and documenting of different approaches to enterprise and entrepreneurship education, both in the curriculum and as extracurricular activity.

• Identifying how to create learning environments and resources that add value to the experience of the learner.

• Reflecting on the impact of what you do with others, including learners, other staff and external stakeholders.

• Providing you with a resource to reflect on your own practices and those of the institution in which you work.

In profiling the framework, Leigh highlighted the importance of ownership by the community. To this end, the framework will be circulated shortly for comment and review prior to a formal launch later in the year.

Of the speakers we were delighted to see Lloyds Williams, Employability Development Manager at University of South Wales, an IOEE Centre of Excellence.  Lloyd presented the approach being taken at USW and managed to include ice cream, Guinness and gin and tonic and don’t ask us how but it made total sense.

SFEDI & IOEE are actively welcoming feedback on the new framework, if you would like to contact us please email: leigh.sear@sfedi.co.uk