A bottom-up approach involving schools, local businesses and local communities is the hallmark of a successful strategy building effort by a fledgling partnership in Bosnia and Herzegovina which gets to grips with EU entrepreneurial learning policies. Representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s education, employment and economy policy communities, private sector and civic interest groups joined forces earlier this year and elaborated a state strategic plan to bring forward entrepreneurship in the country’s learning system.

The strategy combines a number of key EU recommendations for entrepreneurship promotion across the education system and gives particular attention to non-formal education. The keystone to all developments is teacher development where policy makers recognise the importance of the teaching profession in seeing through the range of reforms outlined in the strategy.

‘We took a bottom-up approach to strategy building', says Jadranka Mihić of the European Commission which supported the project. ‘It was important to determine interest, viability and workability of the EU’s entrepreneurial learning principles with the core constituents – schools, teachers, students and local enterprises and the response has been tremendous.'

The policy ideas were road-tested at 20 pilot schools involving a marathon of workshops which focused on teachers, school directors, pupils, parents and employers, and representatives from Pedagogic Institutes as well as Ministries of Education from across Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A cross-stakeholder partnership penned a first strategic framework. This takes a lifelong learning perspective and gives particular attention to the entrepreneurship key competence and teacher training. Education-economy cooperation also stands out as a defining feature of the strategy which will be finalised in 2011 and put to the country’s education ministers.

At a meeting with the entrepreneurial learning partnership in Sarajevo on 14 December, ETF’s Anthony Gribben congratulated all organisations for getting to a common and coherent vision on how the entrepreneurial learning agenda should evolve. ‘You have addressed all the key EU policy concerns', he said underlining the importance of strategy and partnership, which are key pillars of the Oslo Agenda – the EU’s activity table for strategic entrepreneurial learning promotion. The meeting also allowed for the partnership to be updated on recent EU policy developments. Pasqualino Mare of the ETF briefed the BiH partners on the EU’s new employment guidelines as well as the Bruges Communiqué, both of which underline the importance of entrepreneurship promotion.

Alija Bakšić, Director of the Association of Employers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, underlined the specific interest of the world of enterprise in the new policy drive. ‘Businesses need a more developed engagement with the schooling system', Mr. Bakšić told the meeting. ‘This initiative provides an important opportunity and needs to be built upon’, he added.

Read more about the entrepreneurial learning scenarios at the schools participating in the pilot project.

For more information, contact Oana Vodita (o.vodita@abu-consult.de) or Jadranka Mihić (Jadranka.Mihic@ec.europa.eu).