In-house awareness-raising events can be a successful means of engaging staff in an enterprise. A specialist Business and Enterprise school in the West Midlands organised a training day, to give staff an experience of enterprise activity and from it identify: student learning experiences and outcomes; student skills development; and teaching opportunities.

The morning session was active. After a short input on enterprise, the staff were placed in teams and given their brief — to work as a 'small company' to produce biscuits, cookies or cake, design a logo and packaging for the product, cost it and finally make a presentation to 'sell' the product to invited guest judges. Each 'company' member was given a role e.g. baker, packaging designer, finance manager. Ingredients, resources and advice had to be bought. An observer reported back on how entrepreneurial each team was in working together. The morning session lasted three hours.

In the afternoon the teachers discussed enterprise, in both department and tutor group meeting. They were asked to apply enterprise to their subject specialisms and to their year cohorts: to identify existing enterprise experiences within curriculum plans and to plan future provision for enterprise.

The evaluation at the end of the day focused on the enterprise skills and attributes used or demonstrated by individuals and teams and ways in which the individual members of staff could involve enterprise within their teaching. They were asked to give examples of specific skills and attributes they could help students develop.

Ofsted recommends schools establish a clear definition of enterprise, commonly understood by staff. To achieve this objective a London Borough comprehensive school organised an in-service day which involved visits to local organisations including the Bank of America, Pentonville Prison and the DCSF. Afterwards, time was allocated for cross faculty and faculty discussions.

The opening session involved groups discussing various propositions such as 'you can't teach people to be enterprising.' They also prepared questions for the organisations to be visited. On their return from visits, staff fed back in lively group discussion over lunch and compiled a list of definitions and comments on a display screen. They then went into faculty groups to discuss what being enterprising meant to them in the context of their own work. The day ended with a question and answer session with the Team Leader for Enterprise and Schools Business Links at the DCSF.

The achievement of the INSET was re-inforced and developed through facilitated discussion throughout the following term and culminated in a week of displays and events celebrating enterprise work being done in all parts of the school. The evaluations showed that the day was a good model for developing understanding about enterprise. One teacher remarked that the session itself was very enterprising.  Another commented: 'It sparked a debate which should have started a long time ago.'

A Technology College, in an inner London Borough, had a particular interest in entrepreneurship following a visit to a number of secondary schools on the north east coast of the USA. In particular the staff on the visit looked at the National Foundation for the Teaching of Entrepreneurship (NFTE) US schemes of work and decided that it could be adapted for use in their own school.

Staff were sent to Massachusetts to receive NFTE training and a pilot programme was set up by the teachers with disaffected Year 10 and post-16 students. Funding from the enterprise pathfinder project allowed the school to roll-out the NFTE programmes beyond these groups. In the next year there were two Year 10 groups undertaking the NFTE fundamentals course.

The school then had two certified entrepreneur teachers whose training had been paid for by the school. They used NFTE textbooks and student course materials and worked in a Business and NFTE suite where students had access to ICT facilities. The school attended the NFTE Rocks event in London where one of the school's students won a 'Best Business Award'.

A Business and Enterprise Co-ordinator was appointed in September 2004 who was already NFTE trained and another teacher receive training as the NFTE business groups continued to expand. These teachers will also enable the school to have more out of school business visits and offer enterprise activities to students in Key Stage 3. The school has plans for a programme of inspirational and interesting entrepreneurial visitors to meet both students and staff.