The focus of the It's My Future project is on cultivating an entrepreneurial culture in middle grades schools, strengthening competence # 7, entrepreneurship and initiative, building self-confidence that leads to fewer drop outs, better education choices and a stronger awareness of one’s particular talents and skills. There is a lot going on at upper secondary and not enough going on lower down. This is an age level where students often make a “major education move” in terms of where they go next in their schooling career and prevent school drop-out. It’s an age which is very open and creative and can often be a turning point in children’s lives. It is an important time for role models, too. The consortium partners are persuaded that collaborating with peers in other countries to curate, design and develop entrepreneurial learning content, make it digital using blended learning approaches and training materials for middle grades will yield more value at the national level and build stronger peer-to-peer links for such work in the future. The project will be building on knowledge and expertise that already exists to create a 360° educational approach that combines learning outcomes with assessment, formal with informal learning, in-school and out-of-school experiences, local and international engagement, teachers and mentors, digital media with face-to-face activity is the key to impactful entrepreneurship education. The initiative proposed here will help schools and educators put all this together, building an entrepreneurship education ecosystem especially for middle grades. An innovation cluster made up of experienced practitioners, teachers, specialized experts and external partners, building on existing good practice, will further develop the offering for this age group including tools, methods and content, teacher training, mentoring, partnership models with external stakeholders including parents, an international dimension, competition elements and assessment tools. We expect to reach out to 42 schools, train 210 teachers, engage 210 business volunteers and impact 5250 students across 7 European countries with the possibility to expend this further to other countries
It’s My Future was a 3-year project (01/10/2015 and 31/07/2018) funded by the European Commission, under the Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships. Through a consortium composed by 9 organisations across Europe, the project aimed to create a blended learning entrepreneurship education package for middle grades allowing students to learn about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and develop their entrepreneurial competences, building self-confidence that leads to fewer drop outs, better education choices and a stronger awareness of one’s talents and skills. This is an age level where students often make a “major education move” in terms of where they go next in their schooling career and they are very creative and open to positive role models, which can often be a turning point in children’s lives. The project built upon on knowledge, expertise and existing good practices from eight education providers of entrepreneurship education across Europe and a Swedish company specialized on pedagogical consulting and digitalization of educational to create a deeper, more impactful and flexible modular approach. Therefore, the partners developed an eLearning module and an extra activity “Meeting with an Entrepreneur” to complement the traditional curriculum already in use. The two add-ons translated and adapted in seven languages provide an innovative model of implementation that combines online elements with traditional methods allowing the students to enhance the learning experience and extend it outside of the classroom. The newly developed entrepreneurship education package was piloted in seven countries and reached more than 7,500 students, 400 teachers and 200 volunteers/entrepreneurs. Through the participation in the programme, students cultivated a deep understanding of entrepreneurship (over 81% of the students mentioned that the eLearning inspired them to see entrepreneurship positively) and improved their entrepreneurial skills (over 80% students refer to an improvement of their team work, decision making, communication and digital skills). Teachers developed their entrepreneurial knowledge and skills through 22 training sessions, over 100 opportunities for networking and collaboration with peers, support from JA organisations and access to high quality tools and methods (95% of the teachers classifying the eLearning as a high-level quality digital tool for entrepreneurship education). Volunteers improved their skills and awareness on the role they should play in education, creating a closer connection between the world of work and education and making students perceive education as meaningful (98% of volunteers mention that the programme enabled them to support the learning journey of the students and that they would recommend the experience to their colleagues). The project shows high levels of sustainability and its results high potential to scale within and outside of the project consortium and to expand to different target groups.