At Writhlington school near Bath, they know what enterprise means. Earlier this year the students hosted a trade fair where more than 100 pupils from the surrounding area gathered to trade, exchange business ideas and network with visitors.

The firms they had set up ranged from recycling to the sale of business cards and internet commerce. Two local entrepreneurs – Clifford Hall and Paul Evans – ran a “Dragons’ Den” style competition in which students pitched for funding for their business ideas.

The network through which the students set up their fair is run by the Enterprise Education Trust (EET), a charity I chair. The numerous companies and charities whose executives and staff give up their time share the students’ conviction that young people have the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs – risk-taking, adaptability, determination and drive.

Gordon Brown recognises it as well. He has spoken of the need to defeat “sterile” arguments against wealth creation and has enthusiastically adopted the entrepre-neurial culture. Brown also promised the money, but I am afraid that he has fallen down badly on delivery.

Our mission at EET is to inspire young people to prepare for work and to aspire to a career in business and enterprise. We work with about 2,000 companies whose managers go into schools to inform, involve and inspire young people. We also organise business competitions and large-scale conferences in the UK and overseas as well as providing web-based and other teaching material.

In 2007 we worked with more than 60,000 young people aged 14-19 and we work in a fifth of all secondary schools in England and Wales as well as half those in Scotland. So of course we were pleased when Brown commissioned Howard Davies, then chairman of the Financial Services Authority and now director of the London School of Economics, to draw up a report that addressed the need for enterprise education. To our delight Brown accepted the recommendation that an annual budget of £50m was needed to pay for this, working out at £15,000 a year per school.

A succession of ministers have confirmed the commitment in the Commons. What could be clearer? Parliament voted the money to do a specific job.

But that is not how government works. Officials at the Department for Children, Schools and Families hated a chancellor in search of an impressive soundbite pulling money out of the hat for a pet initiative. All secondary schools were sent their £15,000 cheques, but with no formal requirement or way of checking that it was spent on enterprise education.

Heads, of course, were delighted to receive the additional money – ideal for painting the loos, buying a minibus or spending on any other of the myriad school needs. They did not necessarily see enterprise education as their main priority. Nothing was done to ensure Brown’s promises were carried out.

Not surprisingly, schools under the most acute financial pressure have been the ones where the money has been most likely to have been spent on other things. Often, these are also the schools in the poorest areas – exactly those areas where Brown wanted to foster and revive the enterprise culture.

We wrote to a succession of ministers, to no avail. Then, this March, we finally received a reply from Ed Balls, now children’s secretary and previously right-hand man to Brown at the Treasury, but sadly, it suggested he was unconcerned at how the money was being spent.

Thank you, Mr Balls. Only last week, he wrote to us confirming this dismaying approach. “It is not our policy to ring-fence funds particular activities [sic] within schools”. This should alarm those in sectors such as music, art, food and sport. All these activities have been the subject of high-profile government initiatives.

If Brown had announced in 2002 that he was adding £50m to the budget for schools to do what they liked with, and parliament had been told this, then there could be no complaints. However, if ministers stand up and win Brownie points from their media appearances, you are entitled to expect a little commitment to ensuring their purpose is achieved.

In practice the Davies money has led not to a strengthening of proper enterprise education but to its weakening. The Learning and Skills Council used to be a major funder but pulled out its money when it learnt that the government was apparently handing over £50m a year.

The real tragedy is that in the past five years, despite the expenditure of more than £200m, about 3m children have left school with less understanding of enterprise than they would have had if the government had ensured delivery. If our system cannot even achieve such a simple agreed goal, what hope is there that it can achieve any more ambitious objectives?

Sir Paul Judge is chairman of the Enterprise Education Trust. He was the key benefactor of the Judge Business School at Cambridge University

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