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winter 2008 issue
Kate Shoesmith, Senior Policy and Practice Manager

Employability and Entrepreneurship in Lewisham College

By Kate Shoesmith, Senior Policy and Practice Manager

'Employability' and 'entrepreneurship' are two of the current buzz words in education. Today, people need not only the technical expertise required by their line of work, but also the soft or employability skills that help them and their businesses operate, communicate and innovate on a daily basis. Equally, they need enterprise skills that ensure a business continues to compete within its specific sector.

At Lewisham College, a further education college based in south-east London, the value of employability and enterprise skills has long been recognised. The college's ambition now is to embed these skills into every day college life. CSD has joined up with Lewisham on a research project to consider, through both internal and external learning, what approaches could be adopted to meet this goal.

An initial scoping exercise made it clear that enterprise is far more than a subset of employability skills. Enterprise skills are not just for those looking to set up their own business (perhaps the purest definition of 'entrepreneurship'), but how anyone, whether self employed or working within a company, builds the expertise to think in a creative way that can improve and sometimes challenge a business to do better. Furthermore, whilst Lewisham College has made significant steps to introducing employability skills, it felt it had more work to do in training learners in enterprise skills.

The research was therefore conducted by CSD in two phases. The first phase involved interviews with staff at the college to gain their perceptions of existing and past employability skills initiatives. Their responses were then analysed and fed back to the college. The second part of the research investigated good practice, both in the UK and internationally, in enterprise skills teaching.

The findings

The results produced a number of interesting conclusions and identified ways forward. What became clear is that the college is definitely ahead of its time - firstly, in the number of initiatives it has developed in this area and secondly, undertaking this sort of self-review demonstrates a degree of insight from which many businesses could benefit.

The following summarises some of the key findings from the research:

  • A better definition of employability skills is needed to make it meaningful to both practitioners and learners. Many of the staff interviewed rightly pointed out that 'employability' is not always a familiar term to students and that 'skills for work' might be a good alternative. If they are to understand the value and necessity of these skills, they need clear definitions of what the skills include and their relevance to both their work and personal lives. CSD and Lewisham College have agreed to develop a definition that will bring meaning to the phrase for a range of stakeholders.

  • A programme-led approach is likely to be far more successful than a series of different initiatives. If an activity is well planned and has clearly defined aims from the outset, it will be easier to meet the goals and embed the programme for the long term. All too often, it can be very easy to jump from one initiative to the next because it seems to be in the same area and because methods and objectives need to be updated as one approach is found not to be delivering. CSD has therefore devised a checklist and matrix that aims to help stakeholders ask the right questions before proceeding with a new project as part of a broader programme.

  • The external learning on enterprise skills demonstrated the value of sharing good practice. This also applies across departments and teams within any business. Employability skills (such as numeracy and literacy) might best be delivered in a sector-specific way. For exampl, a catering team is likely to use levels of communication or organisational skills that are different to those used in an office or engineering plant, but lessons learnt from enterprise and employability teaching can be usefully shared across sectors.

  • Practitioners should be given as much ownership over the teaching of employability and enterprise skills as possible. This does not preclude giving clear guidelines on practical aspects such as the hours available for delivery and the resources at hand, and advice on different exercises for use in class is often greatly appreciated. By giving practitioners the freedom to decide how to develop this strand of teaching in their class, they can take control of the learning and ensure that learners also feel empowered to achieve in this area - just as much as they do for the technical skills aspect of their course.

Lewisham College has already gone to considerable lengths to promote employability and enterprise skills. In undertaking this activity, we now have more ideas about how such skills can be delivered. CSD hopes to continue to work with Lewisham on developing the critical success factors for such initiatives and a programme for embedding enterprise within the curriculum.

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