College principals and business leaders have launched an initiative to make the further education sector more entrepreneurial. The Gazelle Group is developing a new curriculum that challenges students to take charge of a college-owned business which operates in their local community.

“We’ve got to create real companies and real businesses on our campuses in order for students to earn real money and operate in a commercial environment,” Fintan Donohue, the principal of North Hertfordshire College told FE Week during Association of Colleges (AoC) Annual Conference last week.

“That’s quite a big, controversial statement. I’m saying a proportion of the students programme will not be teacher led, it’ll actually be exponentially led.”

The Gazelle initiative was created by Generator Enterprises Limited, a new company founded by college principals Amarjit Basi, Mariane Cavalli, Mr Donohue (left), Dick Palmer and Richard Thorold.

Students will work on a real-life business relevant to their course and owned by the college, such as a restaurant, hairdressing salon or music production company.

Mr Donohue said: “Our model, if it works over the next five to 10 years, is if you come into an entrepreneurial college a significant proportion of the student output, including what they learn and what they do, will be gained as if they’re genuinely working in business.”

Participating colleges will give learners real cash to invest, and perhaps lose, in their acquired business. Learners will typically operate the company for six months.

Prinicpals involved in the Gazelle initiative include, among others, Graham Morley from South Staffordshire College, Maxine Room from Lewisham College, and Stella Mbubaegbu from Highbury College.

Businesses run by the students will have some restrictions in place to ensure they don’t lose large amounts of college funding, and by definition public money.

“We put proper legal parameters around it, so although they’re operating as if they’re owners, there is a safety net, because they’re dealing with public money,” Mr Donohue said. The Gazelle Group is working with a number of business entrepreneurs such as Peter Jones CBE and Doug Richard from the BBC television show Dragons’ Den, and Ben Ramsden, founder of Pants to Poverty.

Mr Richard said: “I am a firm believer that entrepreneurship can be taught and must be learned, and that’s why I am hugely supportive of this initiative. “We need a new generation of entrepreneurs who will deliver the young, fast-growth, gazelle businesses that create the new jobs, wealth and innovation, and the further education sector plays a critical part in delivering on this.”

Employer engagement and the delivery of quality vocational training is to be scrutinised at the first national Apprenticeship Conference next year.

The event, organised by the LinkedIn group Apprenticeships England, will be held at the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) on March 7, and debate how best to communicate apprenticeships to young people, parents, schools and colleges.

Peter Cobrin, event organiser and National Education Director at www.notgoingtouni.co.uk, said: “It gives us a chance to focus on the major concerns that have been repeatedly echoed in the Linked forum over the last months.

“Our members are the people who are actually at the sharp end of delivery and they want the chance to discuss what concerns them and what can be done to improve things.

“It’s this demand we’re responding to with this conference.”

Confirmed speakers include Ruth Spellman, Chair of the Careers Professional Alliance (CPA), Graham Hoyle, Chief Executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), and Scott Upton, Vice Principal of Sandwell College.

Meanwhile the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) will be represented by two individuals including Karen Woodward, a Divisional Apprenticeship Director at NAS.

They key topics include improving employer engagement, ensuring the delivery of quality training and communicating apprenticeship opportunities.

“We are focused on getting the apprenticeship message into secondary schools, and embedding the apprenticeship pathways at the earliest opportunity,” Mr Cobrin said.

“This appears to be going by default at the moment according to our members.

“There is also concern which FE Week has highlighted in response our members over short-term apprenticeships, and we welcome the SFA’s cracking down on the worse examples.”

The conference was set up in response to high demand from the LinkedIn group, which has grown from 850 members to almost 1,300 since the event was announced.

Mr Cobrin said: “We were fed up with high priced conferences, £500 plus per delegate, at which grey suits spoke to grey suits, sheltering behind their Powerpoints, spouting the party line, while all the time there were real issues to debate.”

Over 300 people have expressed an interest in the National Apprenticeship Conference so far, and event organisers say they’ll be taking bookings once Apprenticeships England is established as a Community Interest Company (CIC) next week.