Entrepreneurship plays a key role in addressing the global challenges of the XXI century, contributing to a more sustainable development, for the creation of employment opportunities, promoting social value for society and stimulating the development of local territories. It’s crucial to develop educational strategies for Entrepreneurship, where children’s and youngsters can develop skills, knowledge and attitudes that allow them to create social and economic value, empowering them with entrepreneurial skills that allow them to act as an agent of social change. Reinforce entrepreneurial education in schools will have a positive impact on the entrepreneurial dynamism of our economies. It is not possible to develop an entrepreneurial school concept if the entire school community is not involved. It is essential to strengthen the profile of the teaching staff and other educational community of skills and knowledge at entrepreneurial level to enable them to work on this subject in a transversal way in the academic and non-academic context, as well as to contribute for a whole school strategy that promotes entrepreneurship as an attitude and where each one has the responsibility to act as an agent of social change. In this sense, this project will target 4 school communities (1200 participants between pupils, teachers and non teaching staff, administration and parents) from 4 EU countries with the main aim to collaborate in research, sharing of best practices and action experiments for entrepreneurship education approaches as first steps to create a "Network of Entrepreneurial Schools". The project will also count with the constitution of local consortiums composed of all relevant stakeholders at local level, that will provide support for local activities. The project visualizes to meet the following specific objectives: - Gather, organize, understand and compare information regarding school entrepreneurship education programs, activities and initiatives that promotes an entrepreneurial spirit in the context of each partner school and respective country; - Research and analyze, through a comparative analyses, various entrepreneurship programs and initiatives and it's impacts in students engagement, early school leaving reduction and school environment; - Create a Scale of Reference for "Entrepreneurial Schools”, as a standard for schools across the European Union member states, in which each step will correspond to a higher level of promoting an entrepreneurial spirit in different members in school community; - Approve Strategic Plans containing the actions that each School community involved in this project will undertake in order to "climb stairs" in the Scale of Reference for "Entrepreneurial Schools", during and after the period of project implementation; - Encourage young people's entrepreneurial attitude, with a special focus on pupils in disadvantage situation, reinforcing attitudes and skills as motivation, persistence and commitment; creativity, curiosity and tolerance to error; confidence; self-efficacy and self-awareness; - Launch a network of “Entrepreneurial Schools”, which will initially include the 4 School Communities involved in this project (acting also as multipliers) and later be opened to other EU Member States Schools. Main project activities will be: - a research phase of School and Country Mappings where focus group discussions, debates, interviews, among other will happen at school community level; - an official project launching, mainly for dissemination/multiplication and engagement purposes, - an international training course, where participants will further discover entrepreneurship education and work on and approve the Scale of Reference for "Entrepreneurial Schools”, - 4 local seminars, 1 per country, for dissemination of previous outcomes and to settle each school strategic plan to become a Entrepreneurial School, - around 10 months of school strategic plans implementation, mainly by the school community, using its own resources and supported by local consortiums, facilitated and reported by the different partners, - a final Conference about Entrepreneurial Schools (EU level) and the correspondent Conference Paper, for best practices and experience sharing, project outcomes discussion and dissemination and follow-up suggestions, as well a the launching of the Network of Entrepreneurial Schools and the Entrepreneurial School Label open to be used by other schools. Project implementation will be based on methodologies that allow for the maximum involvement of the group while valuing every single participant and partner by using active participatory, co-operative, inclusive and experiential learning methods, namely through non-formal education.
Entrepreneurship plays a key role in addressing the global challenges of the XXI century, contributing to more sustainable development, for the creation of employment opportunities, promoting social value for society, and stimulating the development of local territories. It’s crucial to develop educational strategies for Entrepreneurship, where children’s and youngsters can develop skills, knowledge, and attitudes that allow them to create social and economic value, empowering them with entrepreneurial skills that allow them to act as an agent of social change. Reinforce entrepreneurial education in schools will have a positive impact on the entrepreneurial dynamism of our economies. It is not possible to develop an entrepreneurial school concept if the entire school community is not involved. It is essential to strengthening the profile of the teaching staff and other educational community of skills and knowledge at an entrepreneurial level to enable them to work on this subject in a transversal way in the academic and non-academic context, as well as to contribute for a whole-school strategy that promotes entrepreneurship as an attitude and where each one has the responsibility to act as an agent of social change. This project reached four school communities (more than 1200 participants including students, teachers, and non-teaching staff, administration, and parents) from 4 EU countries, with the objective of cooperating in research, sharing good practices and experiences of action for approaches to entrepreneurship education. But the project went far beyond the school communities and partners that started the project. Today there is a learning community. Today, there is a network of schools that wants to promote a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in the school community. The main objectives of the project were: - Collect, organize, understand and compare information about programs, activities, and education initiatives for school entrepreneurship that promote the entrepreneurial spirit in the context of each partner school and respective country; - Research and analyze, through a comparative analysis, various entrepreneurship programs, and initiatives and their impacts on student involvement, reducing early school leaving and the school environment; - Create a Reference Scale for Entrepreneurial Schools; - Develop Strategic Plans, with concrete actions to be implemented by partners; - Stimulate the entrepreneurial attitude of young people, reinforcing attitudes and skills such as motivation, persistence, and commitment; creativity, curiosity, and tolerance for error; confidence; self-efficacy and self-awareness; - Launch a Network of Entrepreneurial Schools Throughout the project's period, the following activities were carried out by the promoters: - After the first partner meeting, the project was launched and formally presented; - Subsequently, and in an initial phase of the project, to better understand the context of each partner and each country, a Local and National Mapping Exercise with practices, experiences, projects, stakeholders were carried out; - A set of indicators that contribute to an entrepreneurial school were identified, a self-assessment tool, that allows each school to have a critical reflection on how to promote an entrepreneurial culture in the school community, was developed; - At the international training course, participants discovered more about what an entrepreneurial school is, and how to promote entrepreneurial skills in the classroom; - More than 400 educators, researchers, entrepreneurs, attended the 3 local seminars and the international conference. events that served to reflect, debate and disseminate knowledge and about the intellectual outputs developed throughout the project; - Strategic local action plans have been developed to contribute to an environment that promotes innovation in the school and, implementation plans with a set of activities and initiatives at the local level, were implemented; - Teachers training and Seminars, local events, students workshops, entrepreneurship and ideas competitions, meetings with stakeholders were developed; - The final Conference (EU level) and the corresponding Conference Paper, made it possible to take the project further, with other partners from other locations and countries; - A booklet was created with practices, projects, and initiatives that promote innovation and entrepreneurship at school; - A dynamic website was created to share the resources developed, projects implemented, and knowledge sharing.