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Guidance supporting Europe’s aspiring entrepreneurs
                                                                Policy and practice to harness future potential





                     organisations to activity in this field. However, such commitment is not evident
                     uniformly  across  Europe.  International organisations such as Ja-Ye and
                     EuroPEN have also made significant investments and their role in the provision
                     of entrepreneurship education has been immense.

                     Future challenges
                     It is important to recognise that it would be a significant task to create universal
                     access to entrepreneurship education and guidance. Ensuring  that  teachers
                     involved in entrepreneurship education are  trained/retrained  and  supported  to
                     apply  the experiential, hands-on approach required to deliver entrepreneurship
                     education, and have access to guidance materials to support their work, is  a
                     major  task.  While  most countries offer teachers some level of training on
                     entrepreneurship, this is generally  provided by external organisations and
                     delivered on an ad-hoc basis: it is less likely to be part of a coherent, systematic
                     approach  to  entrepreneurship training delivery. Looking forward, guidance
                     professionals will also need to be equipped with information and skills about the
                     career opportunities offered by entrepreneurship.
                         The role of guidance is also limited by the fact that guidance professionals
                     currently  have  limited contacts with the business world and real entrepreneurs
                     are not adequately included in the promotion of entrepreneurship as  a  career
                     option in all IVET and HE institutions (though significant development has taken
                     place). Despite a growing focus on entrepreneurship and a range of awareness-
                     raising  activities  having  been  implemented, many students are still not always
                     aware of entrepreneurship as a career option.  Evidence  indicates  that  many
                     students  still  prefer  more  traditional employment positions rather than self-
                     employment.
                         Significant anecdotal evidence is available to support the positive effects of
                     guidance-related interventions discussed in this report, but empirical and
                     longitudinal studies are less commonly available. This  report  has  provided
                     examples  of  evaluation results which are mainly linked to the results of mini-
                     companies, mentoring initiatives and the activities of some individual universities.
                         Demonstrating the impact of specific entrepreneurial learning activities,  as
                     well as the impact of formal guidance  related  to  entrepreneurship,  is  a  key
                     challenge. Impact assessment and evaluation work in this field is hampered by a
                     lack of commonly accepted indicators for success. Most often, entrepreneurship-
                     related support programmes are evaluated on the basis of academic knowledge
                     about entrepreneurship, academic performance more generally, business
                     formation and wealth generation, and personal values and aspirations (Volkmann
                     et al., 2009). If the guidance value is to  be  included,  such  evaluations  should








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