Estonian in Scotland

Pupils from schools across Scotland are gearing up to welcome 100 international delegates to Edinburgh for the start of a three day international conference on Monday (16 November) to showcase Scotland’s comprehensive approach and commitment to enterprise in education.

The conference will be hosted by school pupils and aims to demonstrate the importance to the Scottish economy of developing enterprising and entrepreneurial young people, as well as enabling the exchange of practice amongst international partners from the EU and beyond.

The delegates, who will be attending from as far afield as Estonia, Nigeria and the United States, will be presented with Saltire coasters designed and produced by Scotland’s Most Enterprising Special School. Carrongrange secondary school in Larbert, Falkirk, received the accolade at this year’s Scottish Education Awards in recognition of their enterprising approach to learning and teaching.

During the conference, delegates will hear from keynote speakers including the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Fiona Hyslop and Lord Smith of Kelvin, Chair of The Weir Group and Scottish and Southern Energy and member of the First Minister’s Council of Economic Advisers. A number of workshops will be running over the three days which will include sessions on Scotland’s approach to enterprise in education through the Government’s Determined to Succeed strategy; the importance of partnerships between employers and schools; how working with employers is helping teachers to contextualise learning and make it more relevant to life beyond school; and how young people are being exposed to entrepreneurial learning and what affect it has on their future career choice.

Blog site of the conference

Enterprise in Scotland

Through the Scottish Government Determined to Succeed ( DtS) strategy enterprise has been developed through the curriculum to all pupils in Scotland. DtS has received considerable government funding and as such has each local authority working towards a strategy plan. This presentation by Eric Burton national enterprise officer at Learning and Teaching Scotland presents an overview of how enterprise is developed and the success that it has achieved and the recognition of what has still to be done.

Enterprise in Latvia

Lasma Lancmane from Latvia gave a presentation on the way enterprise was being delivered in her country and how the new partnership programme was going to be delivered in her country. Enterprise is mainly done through economics however through the SELF programme schools are beginning to look at it in a different light.

Enterprise in Sweden

Ingela Ernestam through her presentation gave an introduction to the education system in Sweden and how it was driven in the main by the government. The SELF project would allow them to develop enterprise further and engage with other countries that are on a similar pathway.

Enterprise in Finland

Virpi Utriaine from Finland gave an very comprehensive overview of enterprise in Finland and showed clearly the steps that it has been developing over the past 18 years to establish enterprise in schools. Virpi introduced to us the Mill of Entrepreneurship Education and how Finland was organising its enterprise which is mainly delivered by YES and JA-YE Finland.
An exciting part of her presentation was to highlighted a new self-evaluation tool , funded by EU, which was under development at Lappeenranta University of Technology. It will ready by 2011 and it will be interesting to see how it can be used.

Enterprise through the eyes of an employer

The realisation that enterprise is the responsibility of all was seen through the presentation by Piia Tamm - Manager of the fabulous Concert Hall in Johvi ( Scroll down for pp). She explained that they run an innovative competition for all those young people ( 16 - 19yo)that wish to work for them as a part time job. Piia explained that they were not interested in what school the young people attended but what skills and qualities they had to offer the concert hall and why they wanted to work there.
It was a win - win for both parties in that they both gained for each other and it was interesting to hear her say that if they were not pleased with the students attendance, time keeping, attitude they banned them from work for a month....and you know they never had to do it again !

Enterprising SELF Conference

The main reason for my visit across was to participate in the Enterprising SELF Seminar in Johvi in Estonian. The seminar had over 200 delegates from Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, Finland and Scotland sharing their aspirations for enterprise in their individual countries.

In a very short time period Estonia and in particular Ida Viru have embraced enterprise in education and are seeking to have it introduced into their schools. The Ministry from Education was in attendance to give the welcome and they informed the delegates that the new Education Plan for Estonia will have it is entrepreneurship for every child.

The opening speaker was Mariliis Randmer , a young confident Estonian who gave an insight into the region and pulled on punches with the delegates on giving her view of education in Estonia and why it had to change for the better.