I spoke to my little cousin this week ahead of her AS-results (or whatever they call them these days), and in light of my moan about young people last week, I thought I'd ask her whether she was learning any useful business stuff at school. The good news is that she's doing Maths and English, so she should at least be able to write and count. But apart from that, the answer was basically: not much.

I suppose this shouldn't have come as a big surprise, given that we did virtually nothing related to the world of work when I was at school. All I remember was one pretty rubbish day of negotiation exercises, which nobody took very seriously (it’s hard to make it realistic when everyone knows there’s nothing at stake). But I did think for some reason that things would have improved by now – that kids would spend a bit more time learning about basic economics and business and finance, so they'd have more chance of getting a decent job when they left school. That’s got to be good for the league tables, right?

I'm not one of those hand-wringers who think the education system is hopeless; that's it's a waste of time learning about stuff like History or Art because it has no practical application once you leave. Learning new stuff is fun, and besides, you have the rest of your life to be a capitalist pig-dog - why not spend your time at school finding out about other interesting stuff?

I just think that schools could be doing more to get people interested in (and knowledgeable about) the business world. Now I know some are better at it than others: they enter kids in these business and entrepreneurship competitions every year, and hold careers days when people come in and talk to the classes about what they do for a living. But judging by the youth employment figures at the moment, and judging by the fact that most business owners I know think school leavers are getting less and less employable, I think we need to come up with some better ideas.

So here’s one for a start. My cousin tells me that people are a bit sniffy about General Studies these days, and I can understand why – it was basically like a free A-level in my day (since the exam was easy and required no revision). But I remember loving the lessons we had – they didn’t bear any relation to the final exam, but we covered stuff like music and politics that was outside the normal curriculum. So why not make the General Studies course a bit more practical? You could have a section on current affairs, another on personal finance, another on basic economics, another on constructing an argument – the kind of stuff businesses look for in a well-rounded candidate.

Anyway, as you’ll have noticed, I’m not an education expert. So I’m going to try and do my bit this year by going to a careers day at my old school, to tell the kids about life as an entrepreneur. I suppose I'm not necessarily the ideal role for life in the corporate world, since I basically jacked it in to do my own thing. But I reckon that if you're looking for some classic entrepreneurial traits - a contrary attitude, an appetite for risk, a sense that anything is possible - a room full of teenagers is probably a great place to start.