My first boss: Sharon Davies, CEO of Young Enterprise

Sharon Davies has spent 15 years with Young Enterprise, the leading employability and financial education charity working across the UK. She is into her fourth year as CEO.

Young Enterprise has a focus on applied learning, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness and have already provided over 7.2m young people with opportunities.

Mrs Erbrich, the boss of a turkey farm I worked at when she was about 13, taught me about work ethic, asking questions and the importance of second chances.

I was living in a rural area, didn’t have an easy teenage path, and I was badly bullied at school. I was grappling with who I was as a person and I knew I was gay.

I managed to get this part-time job doing gardening and handy person duties on Mrs Erbrich's small holding.

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There were many times I would phone in sick from a phone box, but she would never sack me. In hindsight, and I get quite emotional thinking about it, I think she knew how important it was for me to have some structure in my life, and she, very kindly, kept me in that job to give me the structure I needed to grow as person.

She was in her sixties and her husband had made his money in the City of London. But he had passed away some years earlier. She was a gruff, no nonsense, Mancunian. A shrewd businesswoman, she had a close eye on the details. She made sure I was doing things the right way and tried to get the best out of me.

Looking back, what I was really grateful for was the way Mrs Erbrich taught me how to do things using show and tell. I had never learned in that way before.

I sorted myself out during those three years of stability with her. Between her and my father, who was a tree feller, my work ethic was formed.

I left home at 16 and ended up in Birkenhead and worked full-time in a Kwik Save. This was in the 1990s and a lot of my peers weren’t working.

At Kwik Save I met a youth worker for the first time. Part of my duties were to clean the floor but we would get youths coming in who would throw eggs and then skid their bikes on them. It was a nightmare.

I anticipated them coming in and I would talk to them about anything, from football to their bikes. In the end, if I was on duty they would end up talking to me. My manager was also a part-time youth worker, had seen what I was doing and soon told her boss at her youth work job. Soon I was given a night’s voluntary work on a tough estate.

I didn’t go back but he came to the store and asked me to 'give them one more chance'. And so I started doing street-based youth work and fell in love with that premise of making a relationship on a young person’s terms and where they were in life. I saw a lot of myself in them.

I also understood the power of applied learning: showing people how to do things, applying what they have learnt in a practical way. I believe that everyone can be a successful learner if you put them in the right place. We took the kids away to outdoor residentials and saw them become different people overnight, by giving them support, structure and opportunity.

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I’m a first-hand beneficiary of the powerful difference that support and opportunity can make. Applied learning as an approach should be used throughout the curriculum. It’s not just about business studies, you can use it in every single subject and in doing so help people to build skills and ignite a passion.

I know there is appetite from both Labour and Conservative for educational reform. That is probably a 10-year action plan, but there are real and cost-effective ways you can put applied learning in place right now.

One is to embed it into all teacher training, and into all continuing professional development opportunities so they can use applied learning as they see fit.

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It’s also about the Department of Education and Ofsted shining a light and amplifying applied learning where it works and has an impact, so teachers feel recognised and schools feel rewarded.

We need to track the long term impact when it’s used, whether that’s measuring destinations, re-engagement in learning or attainment scores.

These three things would have real benefit to the economy: young people would be coming out with more skills, it would boost productivity and help prepare teenagers for the world of work.

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