Determined to succeed - the Scottish Executive’s flagship policy for engaging young people in enterprise through education - has received an additional pound;2 million.

At the start of National Enterprise Week, Nicol Stephen, the Deputy First Minister, said the additional funding would help create a workforce of the future. He said that the initiative, which has more than 7,000 partnerships between schools and businesses, had already significantly exceeded some of its key targets.

Earlier this month, Jack McConnell, the First Minister, singled out the executive’s strategy as having made more difference than any other educational initiative in the first two terms of the Scottish Parliament.

“It has helped create a culture of ambition. We did that by changing from enterprise education to the broader concept of Determined to Succeed,” he told The TESS.

Mr Stephen said on Monday at a Young Enterprise Scotland conference in Glasgow that the additional funding to support enterprise learning represented an investment in the future and would deliver a return on investment for tomorrow’s economy.

Determined to Succeed had helped boost those involved in Young Enterprise Scotland’s activity from 4,000 to 41,000, said Mr Stephen.

“Determined to Succeed goes a long way to building confidence, ambition and an entrepreneurial outlook among students and we are committed to improving access even further to enterprise learning opportunities for all our young people. We have achieved great success in the three years of DtS, but we won’t be complacent.

“Determined to Succeed is here for the long-term and I am committed to ensuring it continues to make a difference.”

Enterprise Week has seen schools across Scotland participating in a series of challenges and encouraging their pupils to adopt a “can do - will do”

attitude.

Activities have ranged from pre-five children at Royston Nursery in Glasgow haggling with traders at their local fuit and vegetable market to buy the ingredients for winter soup bags to sell to parents, friends and customers at a large shopping centre, to primary pupils who organised a party for their local community, to secondary pupils who ran the gamut from hotel work experience to making products from recycled wood to sell at parents’

night.

The YES conference was the largest single enterprise event in Scotland.

Built around a theme of motivation through leadership, it was attended by around 1,000 teachers and pupils from across the country and offered secondary pupils the chance to win a competition and join Glasgow businessman Bill Binnie and his Scottish racing team taking part in the famous Le Mans 24-hour endurance motor race.

Delegates at the conference also heard presentations from 19-year-old Fraser Doherty, who set up an internet business from home and now trades with large supermarket chains, and Simon Clarkson of Advance, a motivational company which works with people in business and sport.