The transition from school into professional life is one of the most challenging moments in life. A competitive job market requires young people to not only possess an excellent qualification but also the ability to apply their skills in the workplace, to be adaptive and to act in an entrepreneurial way. Developing a career is a process, not just a destination. Unfortunately, not enough attention is paid to the developmental process required to engage in thoughtful, thorough career development. The European Commission’s communication COM/2012/0669 and ET 2020 have highlighted the need to develop entrepreneurial skills, to not only contribute to new business creation but also to the employability of young people. Unemployment of young people across the EU remains at almost record high levels. One of the four key reforms in ET2020 is to promote entrepreneurial skills. ET2020 refers to inspiring entrepreneurial potential through addressing the need the attitude, skills and knowledge to generate creative ideas, and the entrepreneurial initiative to turn those ideas into action. This project offers a methodology to address this need but also has a focus on transnational working. The Eurydice document Entrepreneurship Education at School in Europe (2012) indicates that many countries do not have specific strategies for Entrepreneurial education and that it remains an area for development. The skills and competence definitions are fairly general. Many initiatives are based nationally and have limited reach. This project aims to develop a new model that is transnational but based on a much clearer definition of competences and skills. The OECD report Entrepreneurship in Education 2015, shows very limited progress since 2012 and highlights the need to increase awareness of entrepreneurial education as a pedagogical approach relevant to all students and on all levels of education, and a need for increased understanding of when, how and why entrepreneurial education can develop entrepreneurial competencies, with an embedded approach. It states that ‘the field of entrepreneurial education is in a quite early stage of development’. Two are the main target groups: the CAREER COUNCELLORS/ADVISORS whose profiles will be strengthened and VET STUDENTS who will be offered new career orientation services leading towards acquiring new entrepreneurial skills. The above target groups as well as the partner countries will benefit from the implementation of the project at a transnational level, as developing such an innovative and comprehensive programme to VET cannot be achieved without the exchange of information, identification of good practices and complementarity of expertise. Therefore the aims of the project are: • to map out and assess the role of career guidance in supporting entrepreneurship learning in initial vocational education and training (IVET) • to design and offer a professional development programme for career advisors in order to upgrade the services provided to VET students for a better career orientation towards entrepreneurship routes • to create the CAREER HUBS based on the creation of synergies between the labour market, SMEs, schools VET etc. in order to support the work-based learning opportunities to be offered to students, as well as real life opportunities. Six organisations representing six different European countries will work for 30 months in order to develop 5 main intellectual outputs to the target groups of VET students and Career Advisors. The consortium envisions the development of training material, professional development courses for Career Advisors and VET teachers, as well as a complete pack for promoting entrepreneurial minded young people as part of the career orientation programme.
The project aimed to improve and expand the opportunities of students in the challenging life phase of transition from school to working life. A competitive labor market demands not only a well-qualified workforce, but also the ability to apply skills in the workplace, be adaptable, and be entrepreneurial. BACKGROUND The background of the project is the poor implementation of pedagogical approaches (entrepreneurship education) that can strengthen entrepreneurial thinking and acting. This has been highlighted in relevant studies by the OECD and the European Union. The high level of youth unemployment in parts of Europe should thus be combated and the transition from school to working life improved. Entre@VET has developed approaches to assess and strengthen individual entrepreneurial competencies. In addition, the aim was to show paths on how these can be harnessed on an individual basis. The project directly reached a large number of people from the target groups. There were six events with a total of 226 participants (teachers, entrepreneurs, career counselors and students). Among them were five multipliers with 189 participants and one blended mobility with 37 participants. There was contact with 468 people (153 entrepreneurs, 151 students, and 164 vocational school teachers or counselors) as part of the target group survey. OBJECTIVES and RESULTS Extensive training material, professional development courses for teachers to promote entrepreneurial young people were developed. The material can be used via the interactive platform. Specifically, the project also aimed to disseminate and make accessible the activities and materials carried out in the project. Another important task of the Entre@VETSchools project was to better understand the current situation in the VET sector focused on entrepreneurship. It also developed tools that can help teachers and career counselors develop new approaches that focus more on entrepreneurship. The results are distributed across the 5 IOs - IO1: Career Orientation Index for Pathways to Entrepreneurship in Vocational Schools: Career Mapping. Specifically includes a competency framework: A comparative report describes current practice in partner countries on career guidance with a focus on entrepreneurship-oriented career pathways. - IO2: Career Guidance with a Dual Learning Approach. The IO focuses on the development of all essential teaching and learning materials to support the expansion of career guidance programs toward entrepreneurial orientation and competencies in vocational schools. - IO3: Interactive portal for vocational orientation with Open Badges eco-system for assessment. Two interconnected products were developed: The dynamic and interactive PORTAL/PLATTFORM and the e-assessment tool linked to Open Badges. - IO4: Tool Kit for implementation. Pilot implementation of the Tool Kit to develop adequate strategies in partner countries. IO4 is complemented by strategy templates, good practices examples, SWOT analysis for implementation, and tips for implementation. - IO5: ENTRE@VETSCHOOLS Strategy Pacts for Sustainability. Includes linkage points for steakholders and other decision makers. APPLICATION and PRACTICE The interactive platform offers two main application areas the "Professional Development Course" for vocational students and the extensive presentation of exercises, pedagogical approaches and resources for vocational teachers. Both the above mentioned target groups and the partner countries benefited and will benefit from the implementation of the project on a transnational level, as the development of such an innovative and comprehensive program for vocational education and training is not possible without the exchange of information, the identification of good practices and the complementarity of expertise. In addition to the teaching and learning approaches mentioned above, the project provides such examples of good practices as well as approaches for disseminating the project results in the partner countries and beyond. Events conducted were: - Corona-Conditional Online, C1: Short-term joint staff training: Promoting Key Competences (Entrepreneurship) took place July 13-15, 2020. . - Corona-Conditional Online, C2 - Blended Mobility for VET Learners took place between March 2 and March 4, 2021. - There were a total of 5 multiplier events prior to the completion of the project. - Additional events to disseminate the project products; series of interviews with a total of 8 entrepreneurs.