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.

Meeting the Head of Parish - Indrek Kullam

The village of Avinurme Vallavalitsus is as I said quite extraordinary - on drivning through you would not fully appreciate the work that has been done by Indrek Kullam Head of Parish and other parish people to secure EU funding to build their concert hall, swimming pool, sauna, refurbishment of the gymnasium, a new culuture centre and in the building phase at present a new crafts centre. I could go on as there are more. But what an integrated community they are - small is beautiful. A unique teaching tool I saqw in the swimming pool - an online programme that teaches swimming technique to you as you are in the pool and no instructor in sight - the pool manager said that this teaching tool was one of the first of its kind in Estonia

A visit to Avinurme school

A really exciting day that took me to a small treasure in Estonia - a village called Avinurme Vallavalitsus and their new school. A village of approx 1200 population and what an enterprising village - everywhere I turned enterprise and innovation was to be found.
The pupils in the school listed to me ( politely) talk about Scotland and Homecoming 2009 and how we had a history, tartan, history and a nationa of entrepreneurs - Baird, Fleming, Bell, McAdam etc. I then brought them up to 21st century with what we are doing in schools to foster that new spirit of entreprise in Scotland and showed them the work being done by pupils in Peebles High School and Hawick HS and they were most impressed.
The pupils recognised the need to develop skills and I refered them to the Shift Happens presentation which seeks to explain how the world is changing and give them an insight into how it will impact on them. A lovely morning and a luch in the school dining hall with teachers and pupils - because they have a small area 3 sittings take place over lunch time.

Employer Engagement

This morning found me in Toila Gymnasium speaking to 23 teachers from across kindergarden, primary, secondary and community education in Ida Viru on the aspect of engaging with employers. The presentation is found on my slideshare site and gives first of all an overview of the changes in the Scottish education system and why these have occurred and then a short summary of the benefits to pupil, teacher, school and employer of engaging with the education of young children.

The OECD Report Learning in the 21st Century Research, Innovation and Policy gave me the opportunity of introducing the group to research in this field of " learning sciences" which suggests that the way we deliver education should change as we are now in the knowledge economy.

What are your thoughts - do we need to change our pedagogy ?

The group engaged with the Learning and Teaching Scotland website and in particular the Partnerships with Employers section of the Enterprise in Education site looking at some of the online support resources.Several videos clips were shown to the group of how schools in Scotland were engaging with employers from kindergarden to secondary.

In the afternoon we discussed how they were engaging with employers and a comprehensive list was produced to offer each other in group some new ideas. It appeared that employer engagement was being approached at different levels of participation. Each teacher was then challenged to look at producing a mind map of how they could build capacity in gaining more employer contacts (based on the Google Wonder Wheel idea) starting with themselves first then leading out into teaching colleagues, pupils,local community and national organisations.

Anybody have new ideas that could assist the group in engaging with employers ?

"The greatest journey begins with a single step" and that is what I challenged them to do - start on mapping out contacts first and then in January begin to create an idea / team / plan around employer engagement which would commence in August with their new teaching programme.

Have any teachers some case study they would share with these teachers?

Some link sites for assistance.

Slide Presentation - Employer Engagement
Shift Happens - how the world is changing and a signpost for change in education
Eric's Blog site
Employer engagement videos
Caledonian Produce (Marks & Spencer Supplier)
The Muir Project - pupuls working with builder to deliver a teaching house
Rapid Response Engineering Challenge - working across Scotland to increase an understanding of Civil Engineering.
Cathkin Nursery School working with a film company to help them produce their own movie and find out about the jobs in a film company.

Where is Toila ?

Had a couple of emails in asking where Toila is and to save you Google mapping it have put in a Small map. We are sitting 50 minutes from the Russian border and to the north of us, if i start swimming, I will reach Finland so yes it is a bit cold today -1c but some really nice walks. Tallin is the capital and as such is the magnet city that most go to. The Ida Vuru region has seen a vast decline in employment and at present 1 person in 3 is out of work - we think we have it bad. Also the housing market has tumbled and the economy is weak - as we are also.
They have interestingly enough just put together a plan for enterprise 2009 - 2025 - now thats what I call forward planning. I will try and get a summary of this to share with you all.

Home from Home

Staying at the Toila Spa in the samll town of Toila and what an interesting enterprise to have in this part of Estonia. A wealth of treatments for any age wanting to get health - very great foucs on alternative treatments especially with water and natural herbs and salt !
Appears they are busy all year round and really have developed the idea fast post Russian times.
Off to have a massage tomorrow with aromatherapy - need to relax after a hard day teaching -)

Developing entrepreneurship in VET schools

The Estonian education system after school level run VET schools ( Vocational Education Training) and this presentation shows some of their ideas and where are developing innovation in their programmes.
More information on Education in Estonia at Wiki and also in a picture format and an interesting research blog about the system and how some in Estonia would like to see it change.

The Story So far

A brief story of how enterprise in Estonia followed the Scottish model and where they are now going.

LTS & Enterprise in Estonia

Five years ago Estonia started to engage with enterprise and visited Scotland to see at first hand what we were doing with Determined to Succeed and they came back several times with a reciprocal visit alternate years - see TES story. This week in Ida Viru they are holding the biggest enterprise showcase ever held in Estonia and are also running in parallel an international seminar for delegates from several European countries. Their web site shows the programme.

LTS have been invited to present at this event and also, prior to it, to work with teachers in an interactive enterprise workshop.

Over the next week I hope to get some news onto this blog - any comments, thoughyts ideas would be welcome

Eric

Festival & Conference Programme