23.11.2020

Teachers in Latvia, Finland and Estonia acquire skills to make students with special educational needs competitive in STEM entrepreneurship

From November 23rd, teachers from fifteen schools in Latvia, Finland and Estonia will start a distance learning course for students with special educational needs. The acquired skills will allow to increase the competitiveness of students in STEM.

Junior Achievement operates in Latvia, Finland and Estonia and annually provides an EU approved entrepreneurship education program for students. Unfortunately, until now, these programs were not suitable for students with special educational needs.

To change this situation, the Junior achievement organization in Finland has joint forces with project SENsationalSTEM or "Development of cross-border entrepreneurship for students with special educational needs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics" teams. The project will initially train teachers and later involve students who would like to learn how to start their own business, all to develop a new entrepreneurship education program for students with special education needs.

The curriculum for teacher training has been developed by Finnish colleagues and includes both theoretical knowledge of entrepreneurial competences, goals for entrepreneurship in education, entrepreneurship and well-being, and practical group work for teachers, which will continue actively after two days of training. All teachers will form international teams, each team will have their own leader and will run for two years throughout the project.

Students will start working with the teachers next year when mentors will develop their STEM entrepreneurship ideas and help them set up their own international companies.

The project implementation will continue for two years, and in total it is planned to involve 80 Latvian, Estonian and Finnish students with special educational needs, to train 20 teachers and to attract 20 mentors to provide support to learners in practical entrepreneurship issues. As a result of the project, 5 international student companies will be created, which will be ready to start real operations, as well as simulations of 7 companies.

Prepared by Irīna Melņika
Project Communications Manager
irina.melnika@sustento.lv
+371 29480648