62 900 pupils participate in a pilot program of entrepreneurial education
2018-06-25
62 900 pupils participate in a pilot program of entrepreneurial education
RA Minister of Education and Science Arayik Harutyunyan met with more than 130 teachers of “Technology” from Yerevan and Armenian provinces at the American University of Armenia. The teachers had taken part in training courses of the pilot program “The Component of Entrepreneurial Education integrated in the subject “Technology” and implemented it’s testing in the academic year 2017-2018. The meeting was held in order to sum up the results of the above-mentioned program.
Welcoming the teachers, Arayik Harutyunyan mentioned that, considering the demands of the 21st century, teaching skills are quite important. Arayik Harutyunyan stressed, “Pupils should acquire commercialization skills of their knowledge and whatever they create since school years. It is quite important to understand what kind of society and pupils we would like to have. This program has been tested at schools and we are all concerned about the answers to what has been done and what problems have arisen while implementing the program. There are both positive and negative feedbacks referring to the implementation and content of the program, which, I think, is justified. Therefore, this is an important meeting conerning having discussions with the authors and participants of the program and trying to find optimal variants.”
The participants of the meeting presented the minister their observations, suggestions and remarks referring the implementation and content of the pilot program.
It is worth mentioning, that the RA government has undertaken the development of a corresponding program on the introduction of entrepreneurial education in the sphere of general education since 2016. According to that program the components of entrepreneurial education should be taught to elementary and middle school pupils not through specific courses but the integrated component in the subject “Technology”. Moreover, according to the program from 2nd to 7th grades the integration should be held in phases during four academic years, from the academic year 2017-2018 to the academic year 2020-2021.
In 2017 the RA Ministry of Education and Science entrusted the implementation of the program to the organization “Junior Achievement of Armenia”, since it had many years of experience in the implementation of entrepreneurial education programs in the field of education in RA. To implement the pilot program the organization developed and authored teacher guidelines, methodological and auxiliary materials, besides, 1356 teachers from 1247 basic schools were trained. In the academic year 2017-2018 the teachers tested the program in one 2nd and one 3rd grade, that is to say 62 900 pupils.
