A new state school-based innovation program is part of a plan to focus more teaching on future-facing skills.
The state government has announced a school-based innovation program, funding east coast not-for-profit Generation Entrepreneur to run the first stage of a plan to widen educational focus on future-facing skills.
The project, which comes in the form of a voluntary competition for year eight students, follows growing innovation teaching in private schools and talk of pushing for entrepreneurship to be included across the curriculum, as revealed by Business News in its latest magazine out this week.
Generation Entrepreneur delivers programs to help students learn to become social entrepreneurs in partnership with industry and schools across 19 schools in NSW, Victoria and WA, including for year nines at the Southern River College state school.
The state government’s announcement comes amid an increase in entrepreneurship programs in schools across the private sector and plans by Curtin University, funded by philanthropic foundation Malka, to push the concept across the state.
Entrepreneurship is swiftly replacing innovation as a major buzz word in the school sector, although the two themes are deeply entwined.
Methodist Ladies College appointed its first director of innovation, Meagan King, in 2020, around the same time Carmel School poached Anna Lee from education-based startup hub Bloom to establish an entrepreneurship course which is compulsory for year nines. St Hilda’s followed suit with entrepreneurship taught to all students across years five to 10 from this year.
Curtin has been on a major recruitment drive to more deeply embed entrepreneurial thinking into its student and academic base as well as take the concept to the state’s schools. It has repatriated executive Danelle Cross who returns to the university from St Hilda’s where she implemented the school’s entrepreneurial studies this year.
Education and Training Minister Sue Ellery said the launch of a new challenge was to help prepare young Western Australians to lead and innovate in our changing world.
The Minister’s Innovation Challenge is part of a career learning toolkit developed by the Department of Education.
The government said the competition, run by Generation Entrepreneur, will be the first step in an ongoing immersive journey of design thinking and learning for WA public school students.
