ESF and entrepreneurship education in Finland, February 2011

 The Finnish National Board of  Education (FNBE)  is the funding authority for the “Driving Change through Entrepreneurship Education and Competence” development programme.  Finland is going at great lengths to strengthen the role of entrepreneurship education and to improve the competence of teaching staff in order to provide young people the skills and attitudes for coping with change and perceiving entrepreneurship as an attractive career option.

The FNBE grants support for ESF projects developing entrepreneurship education to the tune of  1 million  € annually. The ESF projects co-funded by the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) aim to:

• create  multi-stakeholders regional networks across schools boundaries.

• build learning pathways supporting entrepreneurship from pre-primary to higher education.

• develop entrepreneurial learning environments and teaching materials with a focus on action-based learning.

• promote teachers’ and headteachers’ competence in entrepreneurship education

In 2011 COPIE2 would like to gain a deeper insight  into the articulation of  this joint-approach between ESF and the Finnish National Board of Education which is perfectly aligned with one of the conclusions found in the EC report 'Towards greater cooperation and coherence  in entrepreneurship Education' (pdf, 2,55 MB) stating the need to provide more knowledge and support on how to access ESF funds to support entrepreneurship education projects.