It is hard for most schoolchildren to grasp that learning about Hamlet’s soliloquies or the ghastly cosine rule can do them a power of good. Get them working together to run a business, visit a workplace, invent a device or design a webpage and it’s a different story.

The creativity, competence and maturity demonstrated by children of all ages who take part in school enterprise activities never cease to surprise and delight their teachers. The key to unlocking this hidden potential, say teachers, is the motivation generated when children see the point of what they are doing and can think and act with a measure of independence.

Children get a kick out of imitating adults. What they see around them is people applying for jobs, going to work and running businesses. What they don’t often see is people who can distinguish a rhombus from a parallelogram and rarely see anyone speaking in iambic pentameter.

So there is no doubting the potential of Education for Work, the schools initiative launched in 1997 by Brian Wilson, then the education and industry minister at the Scottish Office, who said: “I am convinced that an increased emphasis on education for work within the educational process can improve the prospects for, and employability of, young people.”

It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Certainly the initiative’s benefits have not been felt uniformly across the country. The response of schools has varied from those in which education for work won enthusiastic backing from senior management and now motivates learning in most subjects, to those where it is regarded as another burden on a curriculum described at a recent headteachers’ conference as a monster stuffed full of worthy intentions but impossible to deliver.

Despite the exhortations of the Scottish Executive, the analysis and recommendations of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and a comprehensive collection of resources from Learning and Teaching Scotland, education for work still barely appears on the horizon of most Scottish teachers contemplating the crowded vista of their school week. “I saw something about it on television recently but I didn’t think it had much to do with us in primary schools,” commented one.

For these reasons the Scottish Executive has established a review group, chaired by Deputy Minister for Education Nicol Stephen, to assess the principles and practice of education for work throughout Scotland and recommend how best to extend the benefits felt by some schools to all of them.

The group is a collection of high-powered decision-makers from the worlds of government, business and education, including several entrepreneurs, a schools inspector, a director of education and two headteachers. In practice, active participation seems likely to be limited: apologies for absences having already been received from several of the businessmen at the first few meetings.

Teachers are clearly not the only people who have little free time, and it is not always their fault - or the fault of school management - if education for work has so far failed to deliver all that it promised. Some schools’ experiences with businesses is that initial enthusiasm and commitment seemed to wane rapidly, leaving teachers and children disappointed. The problem has by no means been confined to small, local companies; some multi-nationals have been mentioned.

There is a perception among teachers that companies are keen to be seen to be involved with schools. “But when it comes to commitment and not letting pupils down,” says Jim Young, assistant headteacher at Park Mains High in Erskine, Renfrewshire, “some of them don’t live up to the standards you’re looking for.”

He tells of a schools liaison officer with a major company who, on three successive occasions and for different reasons, failed to turn up for arranged meetings with pupils. After that, their teacher ended the connection with the company.

However, there are success stories. At Grangemouth High, where education for work has had management backing for years, the school has forged a productive relationship with BP, a major local employer. Brannock High in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, has appointed a principal teacher in education for work, who conducted a comprehensive audit of the contributions of all departments. At Dollar Academy, in Clackmannanshire, a link with a local employer led to the production of teaching resources and highly-regarded summer schools for teachers.

Stonehouse Primary, in South Lanarkshire, has set up a wide-ranging programme of visits, enterprise activities, community project weeks, careers days and workshops to illustrate working lives. And at Carmunnock Primary, in Glasgow, the older pupils, inspired by enterprise activities integrated into every subject, display a level of achievement well beyond their years.

“No single school provided every possible education for work activity,” commented schools inspectors last year in their report on Education for Work in Schools, “nor was it necessary for them to do so to achieve their aims. Many of the schools inspected did, however, provide substantial and impressive programmes.”

Peter Galloway, headteacher of Trinity Academy in Edinburgh, and one of only two school representatives on the new review group, explains that work experience is compulsory for all his fourth, fifth and sixth year pupils. While some of them head for local factories, offices and hospitals - as pupils at other schools would do - as many as a quarter pack their bags and go abroad, to Sweden, the Netherlands or elsewhere.

“As you came into the school you’ll have noticed the flags of the 10 countries across Europe with which we have links,” says Mr Galloway.

“Language plays an important role in entrepreneurship and in Scotland we don’t produce enough entrepreneurs, nor enough linguists. Lack of male role models is a problem in getting boys interested. Our seven language teachers are all women and it’s the same at many schools.

“A couple of years ago I took some of the pupils along to Easter Road, where Hibs have several French players, and some of the boys were amazed to hear a man speaking French.

“As a nation we’ve got to open our eyes to Europe. The Government thinks it’s for middle-class professionals, but we also need to encourage the folk who want to go drive a bus in Milan or cut people’s hair in Cannes.

“At Trinity we try to involve as many youngsters as possible in our Europe programme. We had one chap a couple of years back who worked in a bike shop in Holland and this year someone’s looking at the effects of pollution in the canals there. Other youngsters are working in Europe in hospitals, banks and local government.”

Not far from Edinburgh, Bathgate in West Lothian suffered the closure of several major factories in the 1980s, as well as Polkemmet, the last local colliery. “There was a lot of unemployment in the area,” says Balbardie Primary headteacher Myra Macpherson, the primary school representative on the new review group. “The big industries had gone and what we were seeing was the setting up of small enterprises with a maximum of five people.

“So we thought we should be doing something to prepare the kids, helping them find out what a business is, what you need to do to set one up. We kicked it off and the secondaries have picked it up.

“Because it’s easier to organise work-related activities with older kids, sometimes pupils get involved in enterprise education in the primary, then there’s a big gap till secondary fourth or fifth year. But at Bathgate Academy they now get all their first year pupils - more than 200 children - involved right from the start.”

At Balbardie Primary, the whole school is currently busy on a variety of Christmas-related projects with a level of business sophistication appropriate to their age-group. While the youngest ones are making bird-feeders and nurturing hyacinth bulbs, the senior pupils have set up a company, negotiated a loan from a bank and are selling shares in an enterprise that uses computer technology to make calendars and greetings cards.

The Scottish Executive’s commitment to education for work, re-affirmed by the formation of this new review group, should provide a much-needed boost to these types of activity. The report of the group’s findings, due to be published next summer, will no doubt describe many examples of good practice and some of its recommendations can be confidently anticipated.

Besides talking about children’s enthusiasm and the impetus education for work brings to their learning, the teachers and school managers talk of the difficulty of finding time, space and opportunity for it in the school day. In the absence of resources specifically allocated to education for work, or a formal departmental structure for its support, schools are usually reliant - as are the businesses that co-operate with them - on a small number of highly-motivated individuals. If these should leave the organisation, the activities often leave with them.

“If education for work in a school does not have the support of the headteacher it probably won’t survive,” says Mr Galloway. “I put a lot of time and energy into it because my main aim in 18 years as a head has been to try to connect with the world of work.

“Every subject in a school should take part in education for work and it shouldn’t be seen as an add-on. There still isn’t nearly enough involvement of industry in schools.”