Entrepreneurial learning and women's entrepreneurship (Dimension 1) in the Western Balkans and Turkey

                     Create an environment in which entrepreneurs and family businesses can thrive and entrepreneurship is rewarded (Small Business Act Principle 1)                  Entrepreneurial learning and women’s entrepreneurship are important policy areas in the European Union’s 2020 strategy. Promoting entrepreneurship across the education system – particularly in schools – is a key part of building competitive, job-creating economies. Fully integrating women into the entrepreneurship drive will also boost the economy and jobs. For entrepreneurial learning, the assessment found a reinforced policy commitment in all the economies of the Western Balkans and Turkey to lifelong entrepreneurial learning but system-based monitoring and evaluation remains underdeveloped. The biggest challenge is in translating policy into the concrete reforms needed at school level to address entrepreneurship as a key competence – particularly the curriculum and teacher-training requirements. New developments within the European Union on the entrepreneurship key competence provide a further policy incentive for economies to pay entrepreneurial learning more concerted attention. Higher education’s engagement with and contribution to the Small Business Act assessment process remains underdeveloped. For women’s entrepreneurship, the main challenges are to increase awareness of the economic value of women’s entrepreneurship and to deploy effective policy partnership instruments and resources to achieve sustainable change in the medium term. Training and access to finance for women entrepreneurs need more co-ordination for better impact among women’s start-ups and growing firms.      