New subject to instil an entrepreneurial culture in students |18 August 2017

The Ministry of Education is thinking of introducing entrepreneurship education in the school’s curriculum so as to instill in the students that creative, innovative and out of the box thinking that will help in the economic growth of society.

The ministry, in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), ran a three-day workshop this week on the introduction of this programme in the school’s curriculum.

The informative and interactive workshop was held in the Education Hall at the Ministry of Education and it was launched on Monday by Minister Joel Morgan as part of activities to mark Careers’ Week.

The launch was attended by technical enterprise curriculum teachers from secondary schools and teachers from the Seychelles Institute for Teacher Education (Site).

Entrepreneurship education in schools will allow a student to get to know about business and also learn how to create their own business while still at school rather than waiting and learning later on after they have finished schooling.

The whole purpose is to instill in young people that creative, innovative and out of the box thinking that will help in the economic growth of the society. The entrepreneurship education progamme is for S1 to S5 students as well as for other professional learning centres.

According to Jean Alcindor, director general, Education and Studies Support Services in the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development, it has been realised that young students coming out from school are not prepared to become entrepreneurs as they have not been trained to be creative and innovative for lack of a proper programme in place.

“Some teachers have been trained in technology enterprise, some in careers guidance and some in business studies, but to formally train them in entrepreneurship education, it has never been done before and we want to put more emphasis on it now,” he said.       

The workshop, which was also to gain knowledge from experiences of other countries so as to help the ministry when drafting its own plan, was facilitated by Jens Dryring Christensen, ILO senior specialist, enterprise development & job creation for eastern and southern Africa, based in Pretoria, South Africa and Séverine Deboos-David, ILO employment specialist for Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles, based in Madagascar.  

The two experts are here at the invitation of the ministry.

The participants were on Monday introduced to different ILO training programmes such as know about business and start up. They touched on other topics and took part in business games on Wednesday and indulged in discussions and group work yesterday.

“When you look at the Seychelles educational system as in many other educational systems across the world, they are not really there to create entrepreneurs, they are there to create fields that can create workers in other enterprises so the question is how you can interest young people in entrepreneurship when they are still in education so that when they leave school they are prepared and excited in starting a business and becoming entrepreneurs,” Mr Christensen said. 

Commenting on the Technical Enterprise (TE) programme that is currently used in schools in relation with entrepreneurship education, participant Doris Bick, head of programme for secondary schools and higher education at Site said that there should be proper training for the teachers as entrepreneurship education will be a new thing.

“There is nobody that monitors TE in schools as is the case for other subjects and even though there is a list with different TE programmes, it is not defined as to what programme that is to be implemented in which term and most of the time the teacher who might have been trained in one or two subjects from the list will opt to choose the one he or she is well versed in and the other subject modules are discarded,” she said.

Mr Alcindor said that the concerns raised by teachers with regard to resources, facilities, monitoring and well trained cadres who will teach entrepreneurship education will be forwarded to the ministry to consider when drafting the plan for entrepreneurship education.

The workshop ended yesterday afternoon.