Financial Education for Future Entrepreneurs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Financial Education for Future Entrepreneurs

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship)

Project Summary

Context/background
Entrepreneurship education in both VET and HE contexts is a core element of the EU2020 objective of delivering growth which is smart, sustainable and inclusive. The EU is focusing on entrepreneurship as a key driver of economic growth and job creation and to achieve this investing in entrepreneurial education and support is regarded as a key priority for immediate intervention (Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020, p. 5). Financial literacy is widely accepted to be a vital part of entrepreneurship education. The EU Commission Working Group on Entrepreneurship Education (2014) identified financial literacy as one of three exemplar learning outcomes for entrepreneurship education programmes (pg. 44).

Objectives
The objective of the FEFE project is to develop the financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills of students completing VET and HE programmes.

Number and profile of participating organisations
FEFE brings together 6 partners from 4 countries (UK, Austria, Cyprus and Spain) with representation from VET and HE providers and which combines complementary expertise and capacities in entrepreneurship education and financial training and in the development of e-learning and serious games.

Description of main activities
The FEFE project involved the following activities:
1. Establishing and validating the learning needs and preferences of target learners.
2. Developing a multi-lingual digital mobile game (‘Count FEFE’) to develop financial literacy for future entrepreneurs
3. Developing a multi-lingual ‘country guides’ which cover the accounting, finance and tax regulations and other information relevant to setting up a business in or trading with each of the countries covered in the FEFE partnership.
4. Developing a multi-lingual educator guide providing guidance on the FEFE outputs and how to use them within VET and HE courses and which includes a training curriculum which maps the FEFE project learning outcomes to existing ECVET frameworks.
5. Developing a multi-lingual FEFE project website and Social Learning Platform

Results and impact
The key results of the FEFE project are the following freely available educational resources for supporting the development of accounting and finance skills for students on VET and HE courses:

1. The ‘Count FEFE’ digital mobile game for developing accounting and finance skills for business which can be downloaded for free via the App Store (for iPhone users) and Google Play (for Android phone users). (Available in English, German, Greek and Spanish).
2. An ‘Educator Guide’ to support the adoption of the Count FEFE game and other FEFE project outputs within VET and HE courses. (Available in English, German, Greek and Spanish).
3. ‘Country Guides’ for setting up a business in and trading with each of the countries represented by the partnership: UK, Austria, Cyprus and Spain. (These are available in long form (up to 20 pages) in the relevant local language and short form (2 – 3 pages) in English, German, Greek and Spanish for all of the countries).
4. A ‘Social Learning Platform’ (available via the FEFE project website) to facilitate collaboration between students and between educators and students including the following functionality: chat windows, discussion forums and group video calling. (Available in English, German, Greek and Spanish).

Although it is less than 2 months since the project outputs have become available, there is already significant evidence of the positive impact of the project outputs. Many target organisations have already adopted the project outputs or are committed to doing so in the near future.
Learners are using the Count FEFE game across the four countries represented by the project and beyond, and we have already received much positive feedback from educators, learners and other stakeholders including organisations which promote finance and accounting literacy.

Longer-term benefits
With continued dissemination and as the benefits of adoption become more widely known, we anticipate the FEFE project outputs being used by a growing number of learners, thereby having an increasingly direct and positive impact on the development of accounting and finance skills for business among learners on VET and HE courses.
Such accounting and finance skills are often neglected, partly because the subject area is widely perceived to be ‘dull and difficult’. Educators need tools to help bring the subject to life and to engage learners and make the subject more accessible.
The FEFE project addresses these needs and will assist educators and learners alike in confronting this perception, and in the longer-term the improved financial literacy of VET and HE learners can be expected to contribute positively to the broader efforts to promote entrepreneurship and to develop learners’ employability skills and through this will have a long-term positive impact on economic development across Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 275836,12 Eur

Project Coordinator

ASTON UNIVERSITY & Country: UK

Project Partners

• CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET
• ELearning Studios Ltd
• UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
• BEST INSTITUT FUR BERUFSBEZOGENE WEITERBILDUNG UND PERSONALTRAINING GMBH
• HI IBERIA INGENIERIA Y PROYECTOS SL