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

Example 13. Entrepreneurship training for teachers and guidance
counsellors, Sweden

Botkyrka is a municipality of Stockholm County, situated between the city of Stockholm and Södertälje. It is known
for its relatively young and culturally and ethnically diverse population.

Rationale
Unemployment among young people of immigrant background in the municipality is relatively high. This became
the driving force behind efforts to promote self-employment for young people in the municipality, to increase their
employment opportunities. In 2006, the municipality introduced a training programme on teaching entrepreneurship
for teachers and guidance professionals.
The programme targets teachers and career/guidance counsellors at all levels of education (from primary
schools to higher education) with the aim of informing and familiarising them with the idea of entrepreneurship. In
training teachers and guidance professionals, the idea is to reach a large number of students.
Programme participants include principals, vice-principals, teachers and career guidance professionals.
They attend four all-day sessions which are usually held in August, October, February and May. The organisers try
to maximise the benefit of the programme for participants by spreading the sessions throughout the school-year,
giving the participants the opportunity to see how the skills they develop in each session apply to their work at
school.
All teachers and guidance professionals in the municipality are eligible to attend and their participation is
voluntary. The idea of making attendance compulsory was rejected as it was thought to be counterproductive.
Instead, the municipality tries to increase the number of participants through word-of-mouth; by ensuring that the
quality of teaching is high and the course gains a good reputation in schools.

Programme content
On day one, participants analyse the concept of entrepreneurship. Group discussions encourage participants to
challenge the traditionally held view that entrepreneurship is only linked to business start-ups. This is because the
organisers want teachers and guidance professional to gain a broader understanding of entrepreneurship as
innovation, creative thinking and problem-solving.
In following sessions participants analyse academic articles on entrepreneurship and explore academic
debates. These articles list the benefits of entrepreneurship for the local and national economy, explore the skills
and competences that are common for many successful entrepreneurs and identify technicalities and other issues
related to business start-ups. Participants also learn how they can help students generate a business plan, market
a product, manage a company’s finances, raise funds for a new business, and understand the legal aspects of
business start-ups (e.g. intellectual property law).
In the last session, participants make an assessment of the programme and discuss how the training would
affect the support they provide to students in coming academic years. Theoretical discussions and practical advice
are complemented by a practical exercise undertaken by participants.
No formal evaluations of the training programme have undertaken but anecdotal evidence from the
participants show that the response has been overwhelmingly positive and the number of participants continues to
grow.

The potential benefits of training opportunities like this are diverse. In the
case of Botkyrka, three clear benefits have been identified by the participants
themselves:
• the participants feel that they are in a better position to support students who
want to set up their own business. They have a better technical
understanding, which helps to support students who need to write a business
plan, do market research about a product, or identify funding sources. They
also find themselves in a better position to give students initial advice about
how to manage finances, how to build networks of contacts with local
entrepreneurs and how to utilise business support structures;

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