According to surveys, 60% of EU citizens have never considered setting up a business.
“These figures reflect an attitude that needs to be changed to achieve the Lisbon objectives in terms of growth and employment”, said Commissioner Figel, in charge of education, training, culture, and multilingualism. Speaking at the first ‘Entrepreneurship in Education European Summit’, organised by JA-YE Europe, he stressed: “We need to make our societies and citizens think positively about starting new businesses."
According to JA-YE, a provider of enterprise education programmes, entrepreneurship education plays an essential role in shaping attitudes, skills and culture. The earlier and more widespread the exposure to entrepreneurship and innovation, the more likely it is that students will consider becoming entrepreneurs.
The commissioner said it is crucial to support the take-up of entrepreneurship programmes, from primary school to university, focusing in particular on secondary schools, where spreading the message: “You can create your own job”, by involving students in mini-companies for instance, can quadruple the chances of young people creating their own company.
Caroline Jenner, CEO of JA-YE Europe said: “It is our intention that 90% of our member nations will be running a full roster of transnational programmes – something for every age group – by 2010. Each programme will have a European dimension and each programme will involve business people in the teaching process.”
