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Promoting entrepreneurship education in Spain

20 April, 2016 - 16:59

Spain’s Ministry of Education is charged, among other things, with the general programming of the educational system, the minimum curricular contents, and defining educational standards. For its part, the Ministry of Industry, responsible for policies supporting SMEs and enterprise creation, is charged with the dissemination and follow-up of Community directives for policies in support of entrepreneurship; it also carries out actions for fostering and promoting entrepreneurial initiative, sometimes in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, in fulfilment of Spain’s 2006 Plan for Business Promotion. Added to these difficulties in coordination is the fact that, in Spain, powers in education have been transferred to the corresponding Autonomous Communities into which the country is divided (Figure 4.1), making it even more difficult to establish joint and unified programmes in regard to entrepreneurship education.

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Figure 4.1 Autonomous Communities of Spain 

In 2003 Spain’s DG for SMEs held a series of institutional contacts with the Ministry of Education with the idea of including entrepreneurial initiative as a basic competency to be attained in education, and to name experts from that Ministry to the work groups and meetings on the matter organized by the European Commission’s DG of Enterprise and Industry. Likewise, Spain’s DG for SMEs informed the EU of the best practices that, in this aspect, were beginning to be developed in Spain, underscoring the case of Valnalón in Asturias.

Since then, this DG has continued systematically to disseminate the European directives in this matter in order to incorporate this European objective as a basic aspect of Spanish public policies, both in the General State Administration and in the Autonomous Communities, and has continued to keep the EU informed of the most important Spanish experiences in this sense. With the reform of Constitutional Act 2/2006, of 3 May, of Education (LOE), the DG for SMEs again worked together with the Ministry of Education to ensure that entrepreneurial initiative was included in the Act as one of the major basic goals of the educational system, a matter which in the end was indeed included in the LOE. Both Ministries have also collaborated on the development of curricular contents in the different types of education. Since then, and up until now, the different laws and regulations relating to education have tried to spotlight the importance of this topic, which has now been officially introduced into the Royal Decrees on Teaching.

Nonetheless, even before the LOE was passed, quite a few enterprise-creating initiatives had been developing for some years in secondary and vocational schools in many of Spain’s Autonomous Communities: Asturias, Extremadura, Galicia, etc. Some of them collaborate with each other and share educational methodologies and materials, as is the case of the EJE and EME programmes created by Valnalón in Asturias and implemented in many other Autonomous Communities.

Other important work that must be mentioned is that carried out by the Junior Achievement Foundation 1 since its establishment in Spain in 2001. Junior Achievement collaborates directly with schools all over Spain to prepare and inspire young people to be successful in a global economy by generating an entrepreneurial mind-set through different educational activities and competitions.

The compilation of these and other experiences is based on the publication, “Fostering an Entrepreneurial Mind-set in Schools” (Spanish Higher Council of Chambers of Commerce and the Ministry of Education, Social Policy and Sport - 2009), which contains an analysis of the situation in Spain, reflecting certain experiences and best practices in education, and the works by Sánchez, et al 2, 3. These references have helped to identify existing best practices and they have been thoroughly and systematically updated, taking into account the new normative framework. For this task, the information used was provided by the different Regional Ministries of Education, Industry and Labour of Spain’s Autonomous Communities, as well as information supplied by Chambers of Commerce and European Centres for Enterprise and Innovation.

We now move on to the entrepreneurship initiatives carried out in Spain by its Autonomous Communities. Some projects had to be left out because they are just getting started, and there may be others that as yet we have been unable to detect. This first sample of programmes and activities, however, can serve as a summarized and synthesized approach to the situation of entrepreneurship education in Spain, classified by Autonomous Regions. Table 4.2 lists the main entrepreneurship education programmes that are still currently in force in each of the Autonomous Communities. The column marked “Results” specifies the number of schools involved and the number of students that participated during the last year for which data is available, usually 2010.

Table 4.2 Entrepreneurship Education Projects in Spain’s Autonomous Communities

Autonomous Community

Project name

Began

Educational level

Results

Andalusia

Carabelas

2007-...  

Primary

48 schools; 4470 students

 

Emprender en mi escuela

2008-...  

Primary

22 schools, 1023 students

 

ICARO

2008-...

Compulsory

Secondary

12 schools, 229 students

 

JES, jóvenes emprendedores solidarios

2006

All educational levels

109, 5000 students

 

Empresa joven europea

2005

Compulsory

Secondary,

Upper Secondary, Vocational

53, 1694 students

 

Emprende joven

2003

Vocational

1572 schools, 69512 students

 

Concursos empresas virtuales

2003

Vocational

85 projects

 

Creando empresa

2006-...

 

82 schools, 1800 students

 

Emprender en Europa

2006

 

18 schools, 600 students

 

SEFED, simulación de empresas con fines educativos

2006

 

11 schools

 

Music Hero

2007

 

34 schools, 853 students

 

Emprende en Cádiz

2004-2012  

All levels

37 schools, 8568 students

Aragon

Emprender en la escuela

2004

Compulsory

Secondary,

Upper Secondary

55 schools, 3460 students

Asturias

Una empresa en mi escuela

1998

8-11 years of age

48 schools, 1625 students

 

Una empresa en mi centro

2003

8-11 years of age, EE

20 schools, 567 students

 

Jóvenes emprendedores sociales

2004

Compulsory

Secondary

17 schools, 526 students

 

Empresa joven europea

1999

Compulsory

Secondary

3400 students

 

Eje profesional

2005

Vocational

3400 students

 

Taller de Empresarios

1994

17-25 years of age

9000 students

 

Jóvenes Productoras Cinematográficas

2003

 

100 students per year

 

Creación y gestión de microempresas

2004

Upper Secondary

400 students

Balearic Islands

Jornadas de autoocupación

2002

Vocational

25 schools, 850 students

 

Crea Institut Empresa

2008

Vocational

 
 

Simulación de Empresas

2002

Vocational

15 schools, 640 students

Canary Islands

Una empresa en mi escuela, EME y EJE

2003

Compulsory

Secondary,

Vocational

 

Cantabria

Labor ESO

2005

Compulsory Secondary

 
 

Simulación de empresas

 

Vocational

 
 

Cultura emprendedora

 

Compulsory Secondary

 
 

Escuela juventud emprendedora

2006

 

600 students

Castile-La Mancha

Emprender en el aula

2006

Compulsory Secondary

 
 

Innova Junior

2007

Compulsory

Secondary, Vocational,

Upper Secondary

 
 

Jornadas de creación de empresas

1999

Upper Secondary, FP

240 workshops, 6667 attendees

Castile-Leon

Vitamina E-Primaria

2007

Primary

26 schools, 236 students

 

Vitamina E-Iniciativa Emprendedora

2004

Compulsory

Secondary (4th yr.)

123 schools, 2420 students.

 

Vitamina E-Upper Secondary

2007

Upper Secondary

293 schools

 

Aprende a emprender

2002

Vocational

193 schools, 14000 students

Cataluña

Seminarios de generación de ideas

2007

Compulsory

Secondary,

Upper Secondary

119 seminars, 53 workshops

 

Programa emprendedores

2007

Compulsory

Secondary

37 schools

 

Estada a l’empresa

 

Upper Secondary

 

Community of Valencia

Emprende plus

2010

Compulsory

Secondary,

Upper Secondary

83 schools, 2537 students

 

Motivación para emprender

2003

Upper Secondary

131 workshops, 2790 students

 

Motivación para emprender

2009

Compulsory

Secondary

11 schools

Extremadura

Imaginar para emprender

2008

Primary

1550 students

 

Imagina tu empresa

2005

Upper Secondary, Vocational

54 schools, 1200 students

 

Imagina y emprende

2008

Compulsory Secondary

 

Galicia

FP Plus-Programa idea

2009

Vocational

 
 

Taller iniciativas emprendedoras

2007

Compulsory

Secondary

293 schools, 6260 students

 

Seminarios para la difusión de la creación de empresas

2008

Upper Secondary, Vocational

23 schools, 644 students

 

Empresa e iniciativa emprendedora

2009

Vocational

 

Madrid

Taller de emprendedores

2006

Compulsory Secondary

 
 

Yo tengo un plan

2006

Compulsory Secondary

 
 

Emprender en formación profesional

2009

Vocational

 
 

Talleres de fomento del espíritu empresarial

2009

Compulsory

Secondary,

Vocational

350 Workshops

Murcia

Talleres de actitudes emprendedoras

2008

Vocational

 
 

Concurso de ideas empresariales

2008

   
 

Talleres de habilidades empresariales

2009

Compulsory

Secondary, Universidad

 
 

Escuela de Jóvenes Emprendedores

2009

Compulsory

Secondary,

Upper Secondary

 
 

Olimpiada de creatividad

2009

Compulsory Secondary

 

Navarre

Empresa Joven Europea

 

Compulsory Secondary

 
 

Guía-activa FP

 

Vocational

 
 

Concurso Jóvenes Emprendedores

 

Vocational

 

Basque Country

Hasi eta hazi primaria

2007

Primary

 
 

Hasi eta hazi secundaria

2007

Compulsory Secondary

 
 

Hasi eta hazi Bachillerato

2007

Upper Secondary

 
 

Kosmodisea

2006

Primary, Compulsory

Secondary, Upper Secondary

40 schools, 5430 students

 

Gaze

2008

University

1000 students

 

Sensibilización

2008

Vocational

30 schools, 3000 students

 

Urratsbat

2008

Vocational

40 schools

Rioja

Olimpiada de emprendedores

 

Vocational, Upper Secondary

 
 

Concurso ideas de negocio

2004

Vocational

104 ideas presented

 

Empresa joven educativa

2004

Compulsory

Secondary, Vocational

13 cooperatives, 165 students