Mount Kelly Business School – a new pathway for future business leaders

When a pupil comes into my office and tells me they want to be a doctor, we know what happens next.

We know the subjects they need to study, the work experience they should seek and the qualifications required to progress. There is a recognised pathway that takes that ambition seriously.

But every year I meet pupils who tell me they want to start a business, run a company or create something of their own.

And that is often where the certainty disappears.

The advice can quickly become: "Take Business Studies A level."

Important though that subject is, I have increasingly found myself wondering whether that is really enough.



Our ambition for future entrepreneurs, business owners and leaders should extend beyond a single qualification.

The world our pupils are entering will not reward passive knowledge of business. It will reward judgement, creativity, resilience, innovation, commercial awareness and the ability to turn ideas into action. Schools have become highly effective at preparing young people for established professions. We have perhaps been less successful at preparing them to build businesses and lead organisations.

At the same time, employers, universities and government are all asking whether schools are equipping young people with the skills and confidence required by the modern workplace. The issue is not academic rigour.

The issue is that knowledge and capability are not the same thing.

Young people can explain a business model without ever having worked with one. They can describe entrepreneurship without ever meeting an entrepreneur. They can study leadership without ever being asked to lead anything meaningful.

We would rightly question a medical education that never exposed aspiring doctors to a hospital. Yet we routinely expect aspiring entrepreneurs to learn about business without ever spending time inside one.

That strikes me as a significant gap in our educational thinking.

The Mount Kelly Business School has been created in response. 

Launching in September 2026, it will sit alongside A levels as a two-year developmental programme. The aim is simple: to move beyond studying business as an academic subject and towards experiencing business as a professional discipline.

At its core are 248 hours of guided learning over two years. This is not a weekly society, a collection of guest speakers or another line on a UCAS application. Nor is it simply another version of a BTEC or Business A level. In many ways, it feels closer to a junior MBA.

Pupils will explore entrepreneurship, strategy, leadership, finance, technology, artificial intelligence, business psychology, project management and social enterprise through a curriculum designed around the realities of modern organisations. They will learn how businesses develop strategy, analyse markets, understand customers, read profit and loss accounts, secure investment, build competitive advantage and serve their communities.

Yet the curriculum is only part of the story.

The real value of the Mount Kelly Business School lies in the experiences that surround it.



Every pupil will take part in a substantial mentoring programme, building relationships with professionals, entrepreneurs and business leaders who have actually navigated the realities of commercial life. Direct access to people who have built companies, led teams, raised investment and learned from failure is an invaluable part of the programme.

Alongside mentoring sits an extensive lecture series. Pupils will regularly meet founders, executives and innovators who will share not only their successes but also their mistakes, setbacks and lessons learned. Successful careers are rarely straight lines, and there is enormous value in understanding that reality early.

Pupils will also undertake internships and business placements. There is simply no substitute for seeing how organisations operate from the inside. Working alongside professionals and understanding workplace expectations provides insights no textbook can replicate.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the programme is the opportunity to undertake genuine project work with businesses.

Pupils will not simply analyse hypothetical case studies. They will work on real challenges presented by real organisations, conducting research, developing recommendations and presenting solutions. In doing so, they develop one of the most valuable capabilities of all: the ability to move from ideas to execution.

This combination of structured learning, mentoring, workplace exposure and project ownership reflects a simple truth. Communication, leadership, resilience, commercial awareness, innovation, community responsibility, adaptability and judgement are never fully developed through examinations alone. They are built through experience.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries and redefine work itself, those human capabilities become even more important. The challenge for schools is no longer simply to deliver knowledge. It is to develop young people who can apply that knowledge intelligently in complex and rapidly changing environments.

Ultimately, this is about more than what one school is doing.

The questions that led us to create the Business School are being asked across the education sector. That is why, from September 2027, we will begin working with partner schools that share this vision. If we genuinely believe young people need a better bridge between education and the world of work, then innovative ideas should be shared, not guarded.

My hope is simple.

That we begin to treat entrepreneurship, leadership and enterprise with the same seriousness that we already give to other professions.
 
Because our responsibility is not simply to prepare young people to pass examinations. It is to prepare them to thrive.

August 2026