Policy-makers and teacher training specialists from the EU’s pre-accession and Mediterranean neighbourhood regions gather in Istanbul 13-15 July. The objective of the symposium is to determine how the teaching profession can be prepared to accommodate the lifelong entrepreneurial learning agenda. The symposium follows the high-level policy reflection process by all 17 countries that took place in 2010 and a EU27 symposium on the same subject held earlier this year in Budapest.
The three-day event engages education and economy policy-makers into a collective discussion on the importance of a more concerted effort to train teachers (all education levels) and school management to accommodate the EU recommendations for entrepreneurial learning (The Oslo Agenda). The symposium aims to arrive at set of common policy principles which each of the countries could incorporate within on-going policy reforms back home.
Secondly, the final two days of the symposium will focus particularly on teacher training specialists nominated by their respective countries to contribute the symposium’s discussions. Their task will be to elaborate concrete recommendations that would allow the participating countries to take forward the entrepreneurship teacher training agenda.
‘We have a challenging agenda for a challenging policy area,’ says ETF’s Anthony Gribben who chairs the three-day symposium. ‘I am confident that we will have an excellent exchange and concrete results.’
The symposium agenda includes a hand-picked group of top practitioners on teacher development for entrepreneurship education from a number of countries including Iceland, Lebanon, Turkey and Tunisia. ‘Creating space in the agenda for good practice sharing generates ideas, interest and policy motivation,’ says Gribben.
The ETF symposium is supported by the European Commission. Representatives from the European Commission’s education and enterprise directorates will participate in the event.
The symposium includes expertise inputs from the South East European Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (SEECEL), an ETF-partner organisation which is spearheading entrepreneurship teacher training developments in the eight countries with perspectives of EU accession.
ETF is pleased to host the symposium in Istanbul in cooperation with the Ministry of National Education of Turkey and KOSGEB, the Turkish SME agency.

Type of Event: Operational
Place: Istanbul (Turkey)
Date: 07/13/2011
Topic(s): School and Teacher Development; Equal Access to Education
Project: WP11-31-15
Organiser: Anthony Gribben, Denise Loughran Lampugnani ;
Contacts: Anthony Gribben, Denise Loughran Lampugnani;