FEFE is a cross-sectoral co-operation which will develop the financial literacy and entrepreneurial mind-sets of learners across VET and HE contexts. Through FEFE, learners will develop key entrepreneurial skills: the ability to make better financial decisions, be better able to understand and access alternative sources of finance and be more willing to trade across international boundaries. Developing these skills will encourage more learners to become entrepreneurs and will enable them to grow their own enterprises more effectively. FEFE is fully in line with the horizontal and sectoral priorities of the Erasmus + Programme:1. VET-specific priority (page 108): ‘Further strengthening key competences in VET curricula and providing more effective opportunities to acquire those skills through I-VET and C-VET’. 2. Horizontal priority (page 107): ‘Open and innovative education, training and youth work embedded in the digital era...'3. Horizontal priority (page 107): 'Improve achievement in relevant and high-level basic and transversal competences in a lifelong learning perspective....'.CONTEXT/BACKGROUNDEntrepreneurship education in both VET and HE contexts is a core element of the EU2020 objective of delivering growth which is smart, sustainable and inclusive. The EU is focusing on entrepreneurship as a key driver of economic growth and job creation and to achieve this investing in entrepreneurial education and support is regarded as a key priority for immediate intervention (Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020, p. 5). The EC report ‘Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes’ argues that there should be much effort concentrated on developing young people’s transversal skills ‘…particularly entrepreneurial skills…[because they]…not only contribute to new business creation but also to the employability of young people’ (p.3). Financial literacy is widely accepted to be a vital part of entrepreneurship education. The EU Commission Working Group on Entrepreneurship Education (2014) identified financial literacy as one of three exemplar learning outcomes for entrepreneurship education programmes (pg. 44). OBJECTIVESFEFE will develop financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills of students completing VET and HE programmes. Specifically, FEFE will address each of the financial abilities which have been recently identified by the world-leading international accountancy body, the ACCA, as key to the financial education of entrepreneurs: 1. Ability to distinguish between personal and business finances;2. To be a competent buyer of financial services; 3. To anticipate the business’ future financial needs under alternative scenarios; 4. To understand the decision-making process of finance providers; 5. To relate the business’s financial needs to a country’s regulatory and fiscal framework; 6. To exercise financial management. (ACCA report ‘Financial Education for Entrepreneurs’, 2014, p.6).NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS: FEFE brings together 6 partners from 4 countries (Austria, Cyprus, Spain, and the UK), with representation from VET and HE providers and which combines complementary expertise and capacities in entrepreneurship education and financial training and in the development of e-learning and serious games.DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES:1. Establish and validate the learning needs and preferences of target learners. 2. Develop a multi-lingual serious game to develop financial literacy for future entrepreneurs 3. Develop multi-lingual ‘country guides’ which cover the accounting, finance and tax regulations and other information relevant to setting up a business in or trading with each of the countries covered in the FEFE partnership.4. Develop a multi-lingual training curriculum which maps FEFE project learning outcomes to existing ECVET frameworks.5. Develop a multi-lingual educator’s guide to how to implement FEFE outputs in VET and HE programmes 6. Develop and maintain a multi-lingual FEFE OER social learning platformMETHODOLOGY: step-by-step approach along the stages:Identification->Analysis->Development->Pilot/Test & Validation->DeploymentRESULTS: FEFE will generate the following multi-lingual outputs:1. serious game 2. country guides3. training curriculum4. educator’s guide5. OER social learning platform IMPACT:FEFE will have significant short term impact arising from the expected number of learners who will benefit from its outputs which will be freely available to VET and HE providers and learners via a variety of sources including the project OER social learning platform. LONGER-TERM BENEFITS:The FEFE Project is designed for a long term impact beyond the period of implementation under Erasmus+ programme financing. The participating organisations have the intention to attract external co-funding or other support from diverse sources to ensure the continued use of FEFE outputs.
Context/background Entrepreneurship education in both VET and HE contexts is a core element of the EU2020 objective of delivering growth which is smart, sustainable and inclusive. The EU is focusing on entrepreneurship as a key driver of economic growth and job creation and to achieve this investing in entrepreneurial education and support is regarded as a key priority for immediate intervention (Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020, p. 5). Financial literacy is widely accepted to be a vital part of entrepreneurship education. The EU Commission Working Group on Entrepreneurship Education (2014) identified financial literacy as one of three exemplar learning outcomes for entrepreneurship education programmes (pg. 44). Objectives The objective of the FEFE project is to develop the financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills of students completing VET and HE programmes. Number and profile of participating organisations FEFE brings together 6 partners from 4 countries (UK, Austria, Cyprus and Spain) with representation from VET and HE providers and which combines complementary expertise and capacities in entrepreneurship education and financial training and in the development of e-learning and serious games. Description of main activities The FEFE project involved the following activities: 1. Establishing and validating the learning needs and preferences of target learners. 2. Developing a multi-lingual digital mobile game (‘Count FEFE’) to develop financial literacy for future entrepreneurs 3. Developing a multi-lingual ‘country guides’ which cover the accounting, finance and tax regulations and other information relevant to setting up a business in or trading with each of the countries covered in the FEFE partnership. 4. Developing a multi-lingual educator guide providing guidance on the FEFE outputs and how to use them within VET and HE courses and which includes a training curriculum which maps the FEFE project learning outcomes to existing ECVET frameworks. 5. Developing a multi-lingual FEFE project website and Social Learning Platform Results and impact The key results of the FEFE project are the following freely available educational resources for supporting the development of accounting and finance skills for students on VET and HE courses: 1. The ‘Count FEFE’ digital mobile game for developing accounting and finance skills for business which can be downloaded for free via the App Store (for iPhone users) and Google Play (for Android phone users). (Available in English, German, Greek and Spanish). 2. An ‘Educator Guide’ to support the adoption of the Count FEFE game and other FEFE project outputs within VET and HE courses. (Available in English, German, Greek and Spanish). 3. ‘Country Guides’ for setting up a business in and trading with each of the countries represented by the partnership: UK, Austria, Cyprus and Spain. (These are available in long form (up to 20 pages) in the relevant local language and short form (2 – 3 pages) in English, German, Greek and Spanish for all of the countries). 4. A ‘Social Learning Platform’ (available via the FEFE project website) to facilitate collaboration between students and between educators and students including the following functionality: chat windows, discussion forums and group video calling. (Available in English, German, Greek and Spanish). Although it is less than 2 months since the project outputs have become available, there is already significant evidence of the positive impact of the project outputs. Many target organisations have already adopted the project outputs or are committed to doing so in the near future. Learners are using the Count FEFE game across the four countries represented by the project and beyond, and we have already received much positive feedback from educators, learners and other stakeholders including organisations which promote finance and accounting literacy. Longer-term benefits With continued dissemination and as the benefits of adoption become more widely known, we anticipate the FEFE project outputs being used by a growing number of learners, thereby having an increasingly direct and positive impact on the development of accounting and finance skills for business among learners on VET and HE courses. Such accounting and finance skills are often neglected, partly because the subject area is widely perceived to be ‘dull and difficult’. Educators need tools to help bring the subject to life and to engage learners and make the subject more accessible. The FEFE project addresses these needs and will assist educators and learners alike in confronting this perception, and in the longer-term the improved financial literacy of VET and HE learners can be expected to contribute positively to the broader efforts to promote entrepreneurship and to develop learners’ employability skills and through this will have a long-term positive impact on economic development across Europe.