Entrepreneurship education is about developing a competence that helps students throughout their life, enabling them to bring to the workplace skills to innovate practices and make a positive difference. As entrepreneurship is the individual’s ability to translate ideas into action it encompasses creativity, innovativeness and risk-taking, and an ability to plan and achieve goals.

Often a debate arises whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught, followed immediately by the argument that only a small percentage of students become successful entrepreneurs, and therefore it is misleading to encourage students to be entrepreneurial.

In both instances research has shown that passing on entrepreneurial competences to our students actually creates high-value employees, who contribute to our economy and have a sense of better social being. Entrepreneurs are actually the ones who employ other professionals like accountants. They are central to our economy.

There are different types of entrepreneurship including intrapreneurship, social entrepreneurship, green entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship. Students who have an intrapreneurial attitude are very often valued employees. They are the ones employers seek out as they are not waiting for solutions to be found but want to make them happen.

Within our education system, entrepreneurship should be a transversal competence. By producing a common definition of entrepreneurship as a competence, one can establish a bridge between the worlds of education and work and a de facto reference for any initiative which aims to foster entrepreneurial learning through education.

We should be encouraging our youth to think creatively and to be prepared to deal with the challenges that they will face in the future. To do this, they need to adopt an intrapreneurial attitude whereby, if they are not knocked down by the challenges life throws at them, they are able to analyse, think and come up with possible answers.

Entrepreneurship education should allow and support the development of entrepreneurial competences; whether, when or how students choose to enact their competences is entirely up to them. At the moment we are working on introducing entrepreneurship across the curriculum, in addition to the integration of two funds to help students start and commercialise their own businesses. One of these funds, Hike Up, is still open for applications.

Hike Up, is an opportunity for student entrepreneurs to realise their dreams and their potential. This fund is for students who have already set up a business and would like to further their idea and get it to the market. It is intended for 16- to 18-year-olds; a continuation of secondary school level entrepreneurial/business efforts with the aim to increase the chances of their success in the mark in their business.

Hike Up is about the commercialisation of a student’s business. It is part of the entrepreneurship and education fund and applications close on July 31. Application forms can be obtained from michelle.gialanze@gov.mt or  brian.c.grima@gov.mt.

During the past year, students have been working in various institutions creating their own products and services and marketing them, gaining entrepreneurial skills as they so. Given the ‘practical’ nature of entrepreneurship education, quite a few activities have taken place in collaboration with stakeholders from industry. These individuals played a role, bringing into the classroom their own experiences and work ethics.

In addition, monitoring frameworks were designed so as to understand what activities were taking place and their effect.

Entrepreneurship education sits at the heart of any ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem for Europe’, because education shapes young people’s minds, attitudes and skills. This in turn makes our youth more employable and gives them a feeling of self-worth.

Michelle Gialanze is responsible for developing partnerships between industry and education.