Europe needs its citizens to be entrepreneurial in all walks of life, to be able to cope with the changes that the XXI century is bringing about. Helping citizens grow their entrepreneurship competence is among the priorities of the European Commission in the area of skills development. The Entrepreneurship Competence framework (EntreComp) is one of the tangible outputs of the effort the Commission is devoting in this area. Developed by the JRC on behalf of DG Employment, Skills, Social affairs and Inclusion, the framework defines, describes and clarifies what the constituting elements of entrepreneurship as a competence are, as DigComp does for digital competence.

EntreComp adopts a broad definition of entrepreneurship, as the capacity to act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others, value that can be financial, cultural, or social. The framework breaks down this definition into 3 competence areas (Ideas and opportunities, Resources, Into Action), each being made up by 5 competences. An overview table shows at a glance how each competence develops at foundation, intermediate and advanced level. The full framework further describes a progression model with 8 levels of proficiency and establishes 442 reference learning outcomes. These state what the learners should be able to do per each competence depending on how proficient they are expected to be.

EntreComp has been designed as a reference framework – it is neither a curriculum, nor a programme and therefore it cannot be directly applied into educational practices. Public authorities, third sector organisations and private actors in Europe seeking to improve their guidance, education, training and mentoring services for young people and job seekers, to further an entrepreneurial mind-set among citizens can freely use it as reference to tailor their interventions to specific needs. Learning activities have to be designed to embed the 15 EntreComp competences, and if these need to be certified, assessment methods have to be selected.

Assessing somebody’s capacity to act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others is indeed a burning challenge. The JRC is working to design self-assessment tools for youngsters to reflect on their own entrepreneurial competence. Also, under the Erasmus+ programme, the Commission is funding an international cooperation action (this PEAT-EU project) to make advancements in assessing entrepreneurial learning. PEAT-EU brings together a pool of partners with extensive experience in entrepreneurship education and will work for two years to define what strategies, methods and tools can be used to assess learners’ progression in the development of entrepreneurship as a competence. PEAT-EU findings will help define how educators can select the most appropriate assessment strategy to cover the three competences areas described in the EntreComp, in primary, secondary and VET education. On this basis, guidelines can be developed on how to assess entrepreneurship as a competence. These in turn will be a driver for making entrepreneurial learning a reality in Education and Training systems across Europe.

Margherita Bacigalupo, Research Fellow at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

Our first newsletter went out following our Kick-Off meeting at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in Swansea, Wales, UK in October 2016! You can catch up and read it here: http://eepurl.com/cpE605! We also have a translation into Spanish, which you can find here: http://eepurl.com/crwd8T.

The newsletter introduces the EntreAssess project and tells you what we did during our first meeting. Margherita Bacigalupo of the European Commission’s Joint Reasearch Centre also explains the EntreComp framework that is central to our project work.

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EntreAssess, formally known as Practical Entrepreneurial Assessment Tool for Europe (PEAT-EU), is a Erasmus+ project under key action 2 – Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices and especially the Strategic Partnerships in the field of Education, Training and Youth.

We are six partners in four countries – Iceland, Spain, Sweden and the UK – who develop practical assessment methods for entrepreneurship education (EE). Most of us have already worked on different European projects developing EE together before.

With this project, we want to gather knowledge and experience to develop a model of progression for assessment in entrepreneurship education across school levels. We believe that practical and easy-to-use assessment methods help to enhance students’ learning in EE and support the quality of education and outcomes in European contexts. Research shows us that teachers in EE have difficulties to identify entrepreneurial students and the Eurydice report (2016) acknowledges that assessment remains a challenge. That’s why we are collecting quality assessment methods – and they don’t just inform learners and teachers but also administrators, policy makers and society in general including parents and work-life.

Assessment in EE is a challenging area of work because it involves skills and real world connections that are not easily evaluated. Traditional assessment has been focussed on hard and measurable and comparable outcomes, at the expense of contextualised learning which is more suited for entrepreneurial education. Therefore teachers need support with their practice in EE in various ways – one important way is by having access to flexible, practical and academically-robust assessment tools!

The basic training and emphasis in EE promotes creativity and action (entrepreneurship). Through evaluation methods that are focused on competences, we can support learners to understand their own potential for creative thought and action, and teachers and facilitators can maximise their impact helping the learner progress.

EntreAssess will build on and develop results from earlier European projects and on the expertise of the partners. We draw, among other, on the work developed by the ASTEE project (Assessment Tools and Indicators for Entrepreneurship Education) and on the innovative work being carried out by the European Commission through the centralised development of EntreComp by DG Employment and the Commission’s Joint Research Centre. The focus of EntreAssess will be placed on a broad suite of practical assessment tools for classroom use.

The project runs from September 2016 to August 2018.

Svanborg R. Jonsdottir & Rebecca Weicht