The national Go4it Award is given to schools who demonstrate they are creating, developing and enhancing a culture of creativity, positive risk-taking, innovation, a can-do attitude and above all, a real adventure for learning.

“I believe teachers know instinctively that children need to experience a sense of adventure through their learning. Instead, too many children are growing up scared – they know how to pass a test, but to succeed in life they need also to learn about life experiences, including taking risks and sometimes failing.”

Simon Woodroffe, entrepreneur, founder of Yo! Sushi and Go4it Champion.

Today’s young people need good qualifications but equally, if not more, important are the attitudes and behaviours they take with them into adult life. Our education system spends a lot of time testing and measuring young people’s academic achievement, but how do you measure their level of ‘get up and go’?

Educational leadership charity HTI (Heads, Teachers and Industry) created the Go4it awards scheme as the benchmark for a can-do ethos in schools. 

Now in its third year, the origins of Go4it lay in a hard-hitting Issues Paper written by HTI’s former President Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham.  

In Cotton Wool Kids, Lord Jones explained why excessive risk aversion is damaging society and the economy and why schools should be a focal point for promoting an enterprise culture. He urged schools to give young people more opportunities to experience and practise risk-related skills because today’s pupils are tomorrow’s innovators, not just in the workplace, but also in society. They are growing up in a very different world to the one in which their parents grew up.   

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