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Branson warns that schools, colleges and universities are failing properly to prepare young people for the workplace. “You definitely don’t need all that rote learning and memory skills,” he says. “I went to David Cameron in the first year that he was in office and said, ‘You know, as far as I’m concerned, if people want to become entrepreneurs, we’d almost prefer that they’d left school at 16.’ School is so irrelevant. Let them have the university of life by being out there learning from doing things.” Virgin has started to offer loans to young people to start a business instead of going to college or university. “In running those businesses they are learning much more about life than they would ever learn in school or college,” Branson says. The education system also, in his view, inculcates a fear of failure and “stamps out” the willingness to take risks, which is essential in business. Branson is calling for a radical overhaul of the curriculum, with a greater focus on creativity to foster an entrepreneurial spirit. “The most successful people around the world are creative people — creative musicians, creative entrepreneurs, creative artists — they’re the people that make a real difference in this world, and the education system is not designed for them at all. Unless they quit school early, a lot of that creativity can be completely stifled. There are a few lucky ones that have managed to get through that and stay at school, but if I talk to Bill Gates or Larry Page or pretty well every successful person I know, they quit formal education early.” The businessman insists that the pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change course. A survey by Big Change and the Institute for Public Policy Research found that 79 per cent of young people, 74 per cent of parents, 77 per cent of teachers and 78 per cent of employers believe that now is the time to rethink the purpose of education and to change the system for the better. “Through the pandemic, families have had to learn to teach their kids differently than they would have done in formal education and I suspect that for many kids they found that a blessing,” Branson says. “I think reform should not just come from teachers, it should not just come from politicians. It should come from young people. “I remember my frustration being young and not being listened to, and I think I had every right to be frustrated. I was wasting my time sitting in a classroom doing completely irrelevant things that I had no interest in whatsoever, when I wanted to be inspired, and I had to effectively create my own education for myself.”