Should Children Learn About Business and Entrepreneurship?

Don't Children Learn Business at School?

Business is available as a GCSE option in England and covers areas including entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, operations and business decision-making. That's valuable knowledge, but studying business and experiencing entrepreneurship are different things.

Trying to sell something teaches you what happens when nobody buys it. Providing a service teaches you about keeping promises. Finding customers develops communication and confidence. Working out what to charge introduces pricing, costs and profit.

Children can benefit enormously from opportunities to experience business as well as learn about it.

What Can Children Learn From Entrepreneurship?

Imagine a teenager decides to start washing cars locally. They need to decide what they're offering, what to charge and what equipment they'll need. They might design a flyer, use AI to help with the design, arrange printing and deliver it locally.

Then they have to speak to potential customers, communicate confidently and persuade someone to trust them. Once somebody says yes, they need to turn up when promised, provide a good service, take payment and make sure the customer is happy.

A very small business has suddenly introduced marketing, sales, communication, money, customer service, organisation and accountability.

How Young Can Children Start Learning About Business?

Keep it age-appropriate and follow their curiosity. With younger children, you might talk about why a shop sells something for more than it paid for it, where products come from or what business they would create if they could invent anything.

As they get older, make it more practical. If your teenager wants to earn money, getting a job is one possibility. Another is asking, “Is there something you could offer as a service yourself?”

Car washing, gardening, dog walking or another simple local service can provide a brilliant introduction to self-employment. Even if their first business only lasts a summer, the skills they develop could last far longer.

If You Run a Business, Let Your Child Experience It

If you're an entrepreneur or business owner, you have a fantastic opportunity to share what you've learned. When your child is young, that might simply mean visiting your workplace and understanding what you do.

As they mature, you could let them experience appropriate meetings, explain decisions and show them how you deal with customers, employees and suppliers. Eventually, you might even show them a simple profit and loss statement and ask them to spot where money could be saved or why a particular cost has increased.

Share your experience without assuming your child will follow the same path. Give them the opportunity to see what entrepreneurship actually looks like and let them discover whether it interests them.

What If I Don't Run a Business?

You don't need to be an entrepreneur yourself to introduce your child to entrepreneurship.

There is a useful idea behind Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. In the book, the young Robert contrasts the lessons he receives from his highly educated father with those he learns from his friend Mike's father, a businessman who becomes another important influence on how he thinks about money and business.

Whatever you make of the wider financial ideas in the book, that principle is valuable: your child can learn from people with knowledge and experience that you don't personally have.

Think about your own circle. Do you have a friend, relative or family acquaintance who has built a successful business and would enjoy sharing some of what they've learned? Ask whether they would spend some time with your child, show them around the business or explain how it works.

A conversation with somebody who has actually built a company, employed people, found customers, made mistakes and learned from them could open your child's eyes to a completely different future.

Why Does Entrepreneurship Matter for the Future?

Technology is making it possible for individuals to do things that once required much larger teams. AI can already support areas such as research, design, writing, coding and administration, while digital platforms allow very small businesses to reach customers far beyond their local area.

That could create exciting possibilities for the next generation. Entrepreneurial skills are equally useful for children who eventually become employees. Organisations value people who can spot opportunities, solve problems, communicate ideas, take initiative and understand how value is created.

Entrepreneurship education is therefore about helping children see that they can create opportunities as well as pursue them.

How We Think About Business and Entrepreneurship at The Mount

At The Mount, we take financial and business education seriously. Financial education forms part of our curriculum because we want children to understand money and develop confidence making informed decisions about it.

Our Money Matters workshop is one example. We invited a financial planning company into school to teach children about the value of money, investing, managing risk, understanding loss and making informed financial decisions through practical, hands-on activities.

Our children loved it, and our Head Boy achieved the highest return the company had ever seen during the workshop activity, turning a fictional £500 investment pot into £186,000. Perhaps an entrepreneur in the making.

Many Mount parents are successful entrepreneurs and business owners themselves, and we know they value their children developing an understanding of money, business and entrepreneurship alongside their wider education.

Some of our children may eventually build businesses of their own and others will choose completely different paths. Our job is to broaden their horizons and help them understand the possibilities available to them.