We often hear of how self-made millionaires left school at 14, but most entrepreneurs benefited from a bit of business education, reports Louise Holden.
Learning about business in the classroom is valuable, but like most skills it isn't until you try your hand at the real thing that you truly get the idea.
Transition year provides the ideal environment for learning by experience: just as Richard Branson set up his first company while he was still at school, students get the opportunity to get out into the commercial world and make the kind of mistakes that cost money instead of grades.
The Get Up and Go mini-company project has been around since the dawn of transition year, but this year every school in the country has the opportunity to start its own commercial empire - and make a fortune or sink into bankruptcy.
Speaking at the launch of the new Get Up and Go enterprise manual for transition year, Anne Ryan, the national mini-company co-ordinator, admitted that, until now, private businesses have made a better fist of school enterprise than the transition-year support service has.
Glossy manuals, high-profile mentors, glitzy award ceremonies and valuable prizes have been available to schools with the resources to take part in projects such as the AIB Build a Bank Challenge, the Young Enterprise Ireland programme and the Junior Achievement Ireland awards.
"Very often these competitions are aimed at the highly motivated students who can take themselves off, work by themselves and get the necessary support outside school to produce the goods," Ryan told guests at the Haydens Gateway Hotel in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, where the handbook was launched by Noel Treacy, local TD and Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture and Food.
All of these prestigious competitions are still available to any student who can't wait to start building an empire.
The Get Up and Go programme, however, is designed for the whole class, from Eamonn who'd rather doodle in the margin than balance accounts to Sarah who's planning a career on Broadway, so you can keep your share-ownership scheme, thanks very much.
What many students don't realise is that in order to run a business you need people with every conceivable skill, from the graphic arts to the gift of the gab.
The Get Up and Go manual guides students and teachers through setting up a classroom company that harnesses the talents of every class member. Because the students choose their own product or service to sell, they can capitalise on the skills of their classmates: Eamon's doodling could be the basis of a greeting card, and Sarah's starry eyes could make her the ideal event manager.
Over the past 20 years students have come up with a plethora of ventures, from organising children's parties to running egg farms. Favourites include setting up a school tuck shop, establishing a local car-washing centre and offering a babysitting service. The ultimate goal is to make money, but there's a lot more to enterprise education than that.
Students must interview and recruit personnel for every role, from chief executive to graphic designer, via everything in between. The book then takes students through choosing a product or service, researching the market, managing industrial relations, meeting legal requirements and managing profits.
Every aspect of the process is covered in the manual. This is critical when you consider that only 40 per cent of teachers running mini-company projects in transition year are business teachers.
Get Up and Go ensures that every teacher, and every class, gets the best possible shot at successful enterprise.
Along with the publication of the new book, this year's mini-company programme is to benefit from increased sponsorship (from AIB), to pay for - wait for it - glitzy award ceremonies.
Not only do students get to experience the heady thrill of rolling the commercial dice, but they also get to compete with hundreds of other mini-companies at regional finals throughout the country. Companies will be judged in five categories, so even if a company didn't quite make a fortune, students can win awards for originality, accounting, quality of product, marketing strategy or presentation.
The winners of the regional heats, which will be held at trade fairs in April next year, go on to compete at the national final, on May 10th.
The new Get Up and Go manual, which is available to every school in the country, should mark the beginning of a new era in transition-year enterprise. With this business bible to hand, transition-year students may be about to make a killing.
The regional Get Up and Go heats will be held at the Killeshin Hotel, Portlaoise, on April 19th; Spa Hotel, Lucan, on April 20th; Haydens Gateway Hotel, Ballinasloe, April 23rd; Allingham Arms Hotel, Bundoran, on April 26th; and Vienna Woods Hotel, Cork, on April 28th
The Get Up and Go manual is available as a book or CD-ROM from the Second Level Support Service (01- 2365021, www.slss.ie). You can also collect it from one of seven enterprise training evenings: at Sligo Education Centre (071-9138700) at Blackrock Education Centre (01-2365000) today; at Clare Education Centre (056-6845500) today; at Navan Education Centre (046-9067040) on September 28th; at Kilkenny Education Centre (056- 7760200) on September 29th; and at Castlebar Education Centre (094- 902700) on September 29th. You can e-mail Anne Ryan at anne28ryan@iolfree.ie
