Young Enterprise: Education Pathways Research

In partnership with the Westminster Foundation, Young Enterprise set out to deliver funded enterprise and financial education opportunities to schools in three geographical areas where the Foundation had a strong base: the city of Westminster, Chester and Cheshire West, and Lancashire. These funded opportunities aimed to unlock potential, enhance workforce readiness, support professional development, and track outcomes for programme improvement.

In June 2024, Young Enterprise commissioned us develop a suite of case studies and undertake process research to demonstrate key successes and learnings from the programme to date.

Our role was to supplement annual tracking conducted by Young Enterprise and develop three case studies with qualitative insights showcasing schools’ experiences, benefits for teachers and young people, and any challenges faced and overcome. A key consideration was how and the extent to which students benefited from taking part in different funded programmes over multiple years.

We visited schools and conducted small focus groups with students, interviews with teachers and vox pop conversations with students taking part in live events. In addition to the subsequent written case studies – each bringing in multiple voices and perspectives – we produced a thematic report drawing common insights together, reviewed monitoring processes used by Young Enterprise, and produced recommendations for optimising these over the remaining two years of the funded programme.