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- Written by Veronica Mobilio
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OUR SCHOOL
Virgo+ is a secondary school located in Vilvoorde, a city north of Brussels. Due to this fact many of our pupils don’t speak our language (Dutch) at home. This school year we have 765 pupils. Our student population has been growing slowly over the last few years due to a large group of immigrants living in our region. We educate young people between the age of 12 and 19 in two study fields (economical and social) on the technical and the vocational level. Our roots lie in an economical oriented school founded by the order of the Urseline sisters more than 150 years ago. We are proud of our heritage. Our economical vocational branch is one of the largest in our country.
OUR SCHOOL IN ACTION
Last school year our school became one of Vlajo’s (member of JA Europe and JA Worldwide) ambassador schools. This proves our ambition to promote entrepreneurship in our region and to assist other schools that want to invest more energy in entrepreneurship. Our goal is to promote entrepreneurship education not only for our pupils in the economically oriented programmes with an economical focus, but for all young poeple in the region. Entrepreneurship is more than economics, it’s an attitude that can help every student to become a valuable member of our economy. We want to prepare young people to be ready to contribute to our society, no matter if they are going to enter the labour market or to get a bachelor degree.
Over the years, our school has built up experience with the mini-companies but this option is offered only to students in the economically oriented programmes. As a consequence, we promote a wide range of initiatives in which young people can develop the necessary skills to become an entrepreneur. School is a safe environment for pupils to experiment because they are always supervised and guided by their teachers and teachers are ready to help if necessary, but at the same time, they know that the best way to learn is by making mistakes. Through the experiences we give our pupils, by providing them with the opportunity to develop their own projects, we hope to prepare them for their own future, the future of our nation, Europe and the world.
"When Vlajo asked us to participate in the ICEE project, we couldn’t say no. As a principal with an economics degree, I understand the importance of entrepreneurship for every individual in my school and for our Flemish economy in general. I strongly believe that the best way to learn the skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur is through experience. What better way is out there than the mini-companies to get acquainted with the practical side of entrepreneurship and in such a safe but realistic environment? Theory and books are necessary, but they only represent one side of education. Practice is the best teacher. If Europe is asking us to participate in a study to understand the benefits of mini-companies so that more young people can benefit from this experience in the future, then we are more than happy to do our part", said Johan van Engelant, Virgo+ principal.
SCHOOL WEBSITE: www.kov.be
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- Written by Veronica Mobilio
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OUR SCHOOL
Riga State Gymnasium Nr. 3 is located in the very heart of the capital of Latvia, in Riga Old Town. There are 868 students and 83 teachers in 2015.
The school offers a variety of study programmes, and three of them specialise in economics and deepen the entrepreneurial competence. The school has a considerable experience in organising and participating in different events related to the development of students' entrepreneurial skills, which is seen as one of the main objectives in the current economic situation.
OUR SCHOOL IN ACTION
Riga State Gymnasium No 3 has always been looking for new ways of how to involve students in the political and social life of Latvia and Europe. The school is often visited by the political leaders and government members of the country such as the President of the Republic of Latvia, Andris Berzins, the Mayor of Riga, Nils Usakovs, the Speaker of Latvian Parliament, Solvita Aboltina, the European Commissioner for Development at the European Commission, Andris Piebalgs, who meet the students and discuss with them the current economic and political issues.
Riga State Gymnasium Nr. 3 has a long history of collaboration with Junior Achievement Latvia. Each year several well-prepared Student Companies participate in the International Student Company Festival with good results and get awards in Student Company of The Year Final Competitions.
The students who are studying the economic programme write and defend their business plans individually and have founded their own companies or established limited companies. A couple of years ago Latvian Ministry of Education and Science approved the Business English study programme submitted by the teachers of our school and since 2013, Business English has been taught as one of the subjects in secondary school.
The coordinator of the ICEE project in Riga State Gymnasium Nr. 3 is held by its headmaster and the economics’ teacher, Andris Priekulis, who has received the title “JA Latvia Best Headmaster 2015”. The school has also taken part in different projects organised by the EU in the past.
“The current objective of our gymnasium is to become a remarkable European school which offers to students high quality education alongside with raising its students as distinguished citizens of their own country and the European Union,” said Andris Priekulis, headmaster and ICEE coordinator.
SCHOOL WEBSITE: www.r3g.lv/
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OUR SCHOOL
Narva Vocational Training Centre (NVTC) is one of the leading vocational institutes in Estonia. With 2 campuses, NVTC offers more than 30 vocational courses in 12 different curricula for students in the 9th and 12th grade and numerous training and re-qualification courses for adults and unemployed people. At the moment, we have 1,000 students and 100 staff. Around 800 people attend our trainings and courses yearly.
The curricula of the NVTC, recently reviewed and renovated in accordance with The European Credit system for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET), are all registered in the State Education Infosystem (EHIS) and available on the school website.
NVTC has a long experience in international project implementation (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig, Interreg, etc.). At the moment, the school is participating in two Erasmus+ mobility projects for both students and staff and in September 2015 NVTC was granted with Erasmus+ Mobility Charter for the period 2015-2020 which opens new opportunities for traineeships for staff and learners.
OUR SCHOOL IN ACTION
The mission of NVTC is to provide high-quality vocational education and entrepreneurship programmes to increase the opportunities for personal well-being and social stability’s growth.
“We teach professionally everyone from everywhere” is the vision of the Centre.
NVTC has been involved in entrepreneurship education and worked in close partnership with JA Eesti since 2011. Participating in the ICEE project will increase the quality of our entrepreneurial activities and help us to support and monitor students’ mini-companies within 2 academic years.
“These kind of research activities have proved that students who get entrepreneurship training are more successful in their future career. This is what motivates us to take the challenge. We are full of enthusiasm to take part in the research and implement the Company Programme which inspires and encourages students to start their own enterprise and further develop it,” said Riina Veidenbaum, NVTC principal.
SCHOOL WEBSITE: www.nvtc.ee
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OUR SCHOOL
Etu-Töölö Upper Secondary School is a non-graded upper secondary school in central Helsinki, the capital of Finland. We are an academic-oriented school with about 600 students aged 16-19 with a focus on entrepreneurship and cultural knowledge. We emphasize the active role of the students in acquiring, processing and applying information because we believe that one of our most important objectives is to make our students form a structured view of the world. We teach our students to find answers to wh-questions (what, where, why and when), by taking advantage of the possibilities of information technology, information networks, web based learning platforms, as well as methods of problem based learning.
OUR SCHOOL IN ACTION
We offer eight different courses in entrepreneurship and we hope that there are still more to come. Some of our courses are on the very basics of entrepreneurship, but we also have business camps, mini-companies, social entrepreneurship and product development together with real companies. In addition, we try to increasingly incorporate entrepreneurial pedagogy into all of our subjects. That means more projects, co-operation, group work, student made contents, and experiments.
Our school year is divided into five periods. Our fifth period has been based on phenomenon learning for a few years and now we are in the front-line to make this even better working in our high school system. As Finland gets new curricula for high school very soon and preparation is going on, we are very pleased to see that our main interests (entrepreneurship and phenomenon based learning) are a big trend in the new curriculum. It confirms to us that we have chosen the path that many others are willing to follow, but we have many years of experience on issues that many schools are starting to face now. We are very proud of this and want to share our skills with other schools too.
Our school is digitally equipped and we use new technologies in our practices. We have computers, tablets and most of our students have their own laptops and smartphones. Many school projects are made with shared documents, videos, photos and by using applications along with social media tools.
We are also interested in our students’ well-being. We try to get them more involved in our decision-making system and initiative.
"We are very happy that we are in the ICEE project. With project resources we can travel more to other countries and learn from them, organise interesting events in the school and focus on promoting entrepreneurship through all school subjects. The knowledge we get from surveys is also of great value. We hope that with this project we will acquire more entrepreneurship skills for all our students in our school and in Finland," said Jenni Korte, Teacher and Project Leader of ICEE at Etu-Töölö Upper Secondary School.
SCHOOL WEBSITE: www.hel.fi/www/tyly/fi
ICEE project has been funded with support from the European Commission, Erasmus+ Programme. This website reflects only the views of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.