Small business

4.8 Developing enterprise education 
Objective: To enhance the capacity of the education system (primary, secondary and higher education and life
long learning) to support the creation of a culture of enterprise.  

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The basic need that enterprise education addresses is that of individual and collective empowerment
for self help. This is not only needed for running one’s own business but also for working confidently in flexible
labour markets. The key issues to be addressed in developing the capacity are:
• Clearly defining the objective in an educational context. The key objective is not business and/or
economics education - it is to encourage the development of entrepreneurial behaviours in young
people. This requires incorporation of a strong element of personal development in education, not
merely as an add-on (as for example with the useful and popular junior achievement or young
enterprise models) but as an essential element next to knowledge acquisition;
• Making provision for the appropriate training of teachers and the development of materials;
• Providing support for different educational models with different objectives. In vocational education
it is possible to develop a curriculum which focuses on encouraging each individual to use his or her
vocational skill in self-employment. At primary school level, on the other hand, it is more appropriate
to focus upon development of personal enterprising attributes through innovative pedagogy ;  
• The encouragement of learning by doing: by copying, by experiment, by making mistakes, by problem
solving and opportunity seeking and by ‘making things up’.
EFFECTIVE POLICIES FOR SMALL BUSINESS - © OECD 2004
4. Stakeholder Development
48
The Latvian Entrepreneurship of Management Academy (LEMA) has a ‘Working for Myself’ programme which enables
participants to absorb needed information while gaining practical experience. LEMA programmes are shown on national
television.