3. Use publicity to promote good practicesMember states should strive to foster quality through competitions, awards, and various public events to praise outstandingprograms, teachers, and business partners. To this end, the EU could organize thematic conferences andworkshops and encourage member states to do the same.4. Define common criteria for quality and impact assessmentThe EU should bring together a working group of researchers and practitioners of entrepreneurship education to helpdefine indicators and specify typical educational processes. The workshop participants insist that although uniformitymight seem desirables, it is not always feasible. Therefore, member states should be allowed to adopt andadapt the recommendations produced through this process.5. Encourage members to articulate objectives and measurementsMember states can contribute to the development of a measurement and evaluation culture through strategic plansspecifying a shared strategic vision, objectives for each educational level, key performance indicators, and evaluationmechanisms.The EU and member states should encourage greater collaboration between ministries for enterprise and education.Participants in this workshop were impressed by the Norwegian Strategy for Entrepreneurship 2004-08, a documentproduced in close cooperation between three ministries and containing very specific definitions, targets, programs,resources, and evaluation criteria.6. Promote quality standards and certificationThe EU should take the lead in encouraging and assisting member states in the design of quality certification for programsand teachers/trainers.The EUROPEN quality certificates are a good source of inspiration.7. Include entrepreneurship in program accreditation standardsThe EU should strive to include entrepreneurship education in accreditation standards across primary, secondary,and tertiary education. To this end, the EU should convince accreditation bodies at <strong>European</strong>, national, and regionallevels of the criticality of entrepreneurship education and provide them with the necessary tools.8. Encourage and support comparative evaluationThe EU should promote benchmarking: before and after a training program, evaluations using control groups, comparisonsof different programs, and cross-border evaluation of equivalent programs.The Junior Achievement-Young Enterprise program (JA-YE) in Norway, an important instrument in the Norwegian strategicplan, is a good example in this respect and has comparative built-in mechanisms.9. Encourage multi-stakeholders evaluationQuality and impact assessment should integrate the views of key stakeholders: learners, educators, deans and headmasters,policy makers, fund providers, employers, and business partners.The Norwegian JA-YE program is again a good example in this respect, as well as the Business@School initiative inGermany63Entrepreneurship Education in Europe: Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindsets through Education and Learning
10.Encourage and support independent evaluationThe EU and member states should consider independent evaluation as an important component of an entrepreneurshipprogram and include it in program budgets.Here again, the Norwegian JA-YE came up as a good example.11. Build evaluation systematically into programsFor quality and impact assessment to be possible and to enable continuous improvement, evaluation should be systematicallyincluded into programs at the outset. Here again, the workshop participants stress the need for evaluation thatis independent, comparative, and reflecting a multi-stakeholders perspective.Also, evaluation should seek a balance between short term impact measurement (learners satisfaction with a program)with long term “business” impact (people actually creating businesses or behaving entrepreneurially).12. Tie public funding to evaluationThe participants in the workshop would like policy makers to ponder the potential benefits of tying public funding ofprogram to the specification of a built-in quality and impact assessment and improvement system.64Entrepreneurship Education in Europe: Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindsets through Education and Learning
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