European Schools Are Quietly Training a Generation of Entrepreneurs but They can do Better

(Photo by Austin Distel) Europe says it wants teenagers who can spot an opportunity, manage a budget, take a risk, and build something real instead of ‘simply’ passing exams. But do schools deliver such an entrepreneurship education that inspires future entrepreneurs?

That’s where the new Eurydice report “Entrepreneurship education at school in Europe – 2025” comes in handy as it maps how far education systems across Europe have gone to make that happen, and where the gap between rhetoric and classroom reality is still wide.

I went through the 106-pages counting report and will give you some of the most interesting elements in it. And for those who wonder if all this is new, the idea of entrepreneurship education certainly isn’t new at all as the video below from 10 years ago clearly shows.

What is the project ‘Entrepreneurship education at school in Europe – 2025’ all about

The “Entrepreneurship education at school in Europe – 2025” report examines how entrepreneurship education is embedded in primary and general secondary education across 38 education systems. The 38 systems are active in the following countries: the 27 EU Member States plus Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Türkiye. It focuses on the 2024/2025 school year.

The central question in the report is quite simple: are schools in Europe actually teaching entrepreneurship as a competence? And with this question the report is not talking about how to start a company, but how to turn ideas into action that creates value for others in society. That very definition comes from the EU’s EntreComp framework, which sees entrepreneurship as a transversal life skill.

The report looks at four pillars:

1. National policy frameworks and reforms,
2. Curriculum content,
3. Teacher and school leader training,
4. Practical entrepreneurial experience and the whole-school approach.

It’s a policy and systems analysis based on top-level documents: legislation, curricula, national strategies, competence frameworks for teachers, and national guidance to schools.

Who is behind it

The work is produced by the Eurydice Network as explained above, and coordinated by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Eurydice’s job in this report is to describe and analyze how education systems in Europe are organized and how they function, using comparable data. EACEA itself sits under the European Commission and runs Platforms, Studies and Analysis.

The text of the report was completed in October 2025, so it’s the most recent data on the ‘market’ so to speak. Important in this though is that the agency notes that the report does not represent the official position of the European Commission.

The work does however plug directly into current Commission priorities such as the “Union of Skills,” which links competitiveness, resilience, green transition and digital readiness to skills policy, and feeds into the planned EU Teachers and Trainers Agenda.

Scope of the report

The scope is narrow and sharp:

• Levels covered: primary, lower secondary, and general upper secondary education (ISCED 1, 24, 34). Vocational secondary is not included.
• Schools included: mainly public schools, plus government-dependent private schools in Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands.
• Timeframe: policies and curricula in force in 2024/2025; reforms from the last five years.
• Geography: EU-27 + 11 other systems in/around the EEA and candidate countries.

The report uses the EntreComp model to break entrepreneurship competence into 15 sub-competences, grouped under “Ideas and opportunities,” “Resources,” and “Into action.” For detailed analysis it zooms in on six of those: spotting opportunities, vision, mobilising resources, financial and economic literacy, planning and management, and coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk.

This matters because like I wrote earlier the EU no longer defines entrepreneurship education as “how to start a company.” It defines it as mindset, agency, initiative, resilience, ethical value creation, and the ability to act. That is a political choice with budget and labor market consequences.

Policies: How do governments talk about entrepreneurship education?

Most education systems now have at least one strategy that references entrepreneurship education. In 20 education systems, entrepreneurship education is embedded in broader strategies: skills for the 21st century, labour market readiness, green and digital transitions, or youth empowerment.

Some patterns the report shows:

• Some systems (e.g. Belgium Flemish Community, Serbia) embed entrepreneurship as part of mainstream school improvement and curriculum renewal. The idea is: students shouldn’t only learn maths and languages, they should also practice initiative, planning, and responsibility.
• Some strategies are skills agendas. Greece’s “Skills Labs,” for example, frames entrepreneurship alongside life skills such as financial literacy and planning. Poland’s skills strategies focus on management and business abilities as core competences for all learners, not just future CEOs.
• Some strategies are industrial / economic. Malta’s national education strategy 2024–2030 explicitly pushes stronger ties between schools and industry and calls for entrepreneurship education at all levels as part of a competitiveness narrative.
• Some are youth empowerment plans. Cyprus’ national youth strategy links entrepreneurship to employability, social inclusion, and democratic participation.

Five systems have a dedicated national strategy focused purely on entrepreneurship education in schools. Luxembourg, Austria, Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro have adopted dedicated entrepreneurship education strategies. They explicitly aim to develop entrepreneurial competences in learners, often mapped against EntreComp, and they position entrepreneurship as something to cultivate from early schooling to adulthood.

• Montenegro’s “strategy for lifelong entrepreneurial learning 2020–2024″ is an example: it spans from early childhood education to adult learning, and frames entrepreneurship as innovative thinking and creative problem-solving across all sectors.
• Luxembourg’s “Sustainable entrepreneurial schools” initiative targets general secondary schools, linking entrepreneurship to 21st-century competences and sustainability.
• Sweden’s strategy for entrepreneurship in education, launched in 2009 and still in force, seeks to integrate entrepreneurial mindset and skills across primary and secondary schooling, not as a niche elective.

National initiatives

Beyond strategy documents, many countries run national initiatives: entrepreneurship competitions, mini-company schemes, innovation labs, and grant-funded programs that connect schools to businesses.

These initiatives usually:

• involve external partners (businesses, local chambers, NGOs),
• bring extra funding,
• rely on competition formats such as hackathons, fairs, and pitch events.

JA Europe (Junior Achievement Europe) is a recurring actor. Ministries and agencies in countries such as Czechia, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden and Norway work with JA to provide structured entrepreneurship experiences for learners aged roughly 10–25, including mentorship, running a mini-company, and business plan competitions.

Reforms are happening

Around one-third of the education systems studied have carried out reforms in the last five years that have changed entrepreneurship education. Most reforms target the national curriculum.

Two recurring moves:

• Make entrepreneurship (or entrepreneurship-related abilities) part of cross-curricular themes from primary upwards, rather than keeping it isolated in economics-type electives.
• Create or update specific subjects (for example, Poland replacing “Entrepreneurship education” with “Business and Management” in general upper secondary, with more focus on project work, markets, and management skills).

Here are a few examples:

• Austria: from 2024, entrepreneurship education is explicitly written into the elementary school curriculum as an overarching theme across subjects.
• Slovakia: a 2023 reform of the state education programme for primary and lower secondary emphasises entrepreneurship, initiative, critical thinking, digital literacy, and soft skills as baseline 21st-century competences. From 2026/2027 every school must apply it. The reform explicitly references EntreComp and asks pupils to work individually and in teams on ideas they develop and bring to life.
• Switzerland: “Economy and law” has become a core subject for general secondary schools, alongside maths, history, and languages. The subject is meant to build a foundation in economics and law, including communication, pitching, teamwork, and strategic thinking. And these are really core entrepreneurial abilities.

Policy landscape across Europe in 2024/2025

Policy dimension	What the report finds
Systems with at least one strategy referring to entrepreneurship education	Most systems. 20 systems include entrepreneurship education inside broader strategies on skills, education, economy, or youth.
Systems with a stand-alone entrepreneurship education strategy	5 systems (e.g. Luxembourg, Austria, Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro).
Systems reporting large-scale national initiatives	Many. Common traits: external partners, competitive projects, dedicated funding (e.g. JA Europe, YouthStart).
Systems with reforms in last 5 years touching entrepreneurship education	Slightly more than one-third. Most reforms embed entrepreneurship in the curriculum as cross-curricular or subject-based content.
Use of EntreComp as a reference	Explicit in dedicated strategies; increasingly visible in reforms such as Slovakia’s 2023 update.

Curriculum: how entrepreneurship education shows up in class

The second chapter in the report looks at where entrepreneurship lives in the national curriculum. The answer is complex: it lives everywhere and nowhere at once.

Cross-curricular approach

Roughly three-quarters of education systems integrate entrepreneurship education through a cross-curricular approach. This means that entrepreneurship competences are expected to surface across subjects instead of sitting in one single course. This is true from primary through upper secondary.

This approach treats entrepreneurship as a way of thinking woven through science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), humanities, and social sciences. In primary education, where children do not yet have specialized economics courses, entrepreneurship education is embedded in general subjects and thematic areas instead of a standalone “entrepreneurship” subject.

Subject-based approach

As students get older, the model shifts. In lower secondary and especially in general upper secondary, entrepreneurship education appears inside specific subjects:

• subjects with “entrepreneurship” in their title,
• business- and economics-oriented subjects like “Economy and law” or “Business and Management.”

Upper secondary level students often encounter explicit content on starting ventures, business planning, financial literacy, resource mobilization, and project management.

The lower secondary student sits in the middle: in some systems, specialized courses already exist; in others, entrepreneurship is still mostly an integrated theme.

The overall trend is that at age 6–12, entrepreneurship is mostly about values, creativity, collaboration, with early financial awareness embedded across subjects. At age 15–18, it becomes more technical and more business-facing, with explicit economic/financial content and assignments that ask students to design products, pitch ideas, or simulate companies.

What competences are actually taught?

The report dives into six sub-competences from EntreComp and checks whether they appear in curricula at primary, lower secondary, and general upper secondary level. The pattern is not symmetrical.

• Financial and economic literacy is everywhere. It’s prominent at all levels. Children are being taught to understand money, basic economics, value exchange, budgeting.
• Planning and management, mobilising resources, and project management type abilities show up more in secondary education, often tied to business/economics subjects or practical project work.
• Vision , that is the ability to imagine a future state and work towards it, is weak in most curricula, especially in primary and lower secondary.
• Spotting opportunities and coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk are also often missing, especially in early schooling. These two depend on imagination, initiative, and comfort with failure, areas schools still struggle to assess.

The report therefor warns: if entrepreneurship education in schools reduces to “how markets work” and “how to do a budget,” then Europe is underusing the full width of the competence. The broader definition includes imagination, resilience under uncertainty, and proactive value creation in social, cultural, civic, and green contexts. And that is more than just learning about profit-making ventures.

Presence of key entrepreneurial abilities in school curricula

Entrepreneurial competence component (EntreComp)	Presence in curriculum according to the report
Financial and economic literacy	Very present at all levels (primary, lower secondary, upper secondary). This is the most common component in European curricula.
Planning and management / project management	Present mainly in secondary education, often as part of specific subjects such as “Business and Management” or “Economy and law.”
Mobilising resources	Present more in upper grades where students work on ventures, team projects, or simulated companies.
Spotting opportunities	Frequently absent in primary curricula; less consistently addressed until upper secondary.
Vision (imagining a future and setting a direction)	Underrepresented overall, especially in primary and lower secondary education.
Coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk	Often missing from early-stage curricula; not treated as systematically as financial literacy.

The conclusion of Chapter 2 is quite clear: European education systems teach entrepreneurial abilities more extensively in higher grades than in lower ones. Every competence component analyzed was more common in general upper secondary compared to primary.

This staged exposure has logic (you don’t ask 9-year-olds to run a start-up pitch deck), but it also delays agency, resilience, and risk navigation until late adolescence. The report calls this a missed opportunity for early entrepreneurship education in primary schools, and recommends further research that also includes vocational pathways, which were not analyzed here.

Teacher competence and school leadership: who is supposed to teach this?

The report dedicates its 3rd Chapter to teachers and school leaders, using two angles:

1. Do teacher competence frameworks explicitly include entrepreneurship education?
2. Do continuing professional development (CPD) regulations mention entrepreneurship education for teachers and heads?

Teacher competence frameworks

Most education systems in Europe now have teacher competence frameworks or professional standards. These documents describe what teachers should know, understand, and be able to do. They guide initial teacher education, hiring, appraisal, and career-long development.

But almost none of these frameworks explicitly include entrepreneurship education.

Only three education systems – Estonia, Poland and Norway – explicitly refer to entrepreneurship education in competence frameworks that apply to all teachers, not only business teachers. Austria has developed a competence framework specifically for teachers who teach entrepreneurship.

There’s a structural point here. Many frameworks are generic and short. They often cover professional ethics, inclusion, digital competence, pedagogy. When they’re concise, they do risk omitting specialized areas like entrepreneurship education, even if ministries tell schools “this matters.” The report advises therefor caution when comparing systems, because a short framework can hide policy priorities that exist elsewhere (in curricula, CPD schemes, or reform packages).

CPD (Continuing Professional Development) for teachers

Most systems have CPD regulations or funding schemes for ongoing teacher training. In 19 education systems, those CPD instruments explicitly reference training opportunities in entrepreneurship education. In 15 of those 19, the regulations go further and define learning objectives for those trainings.

The report identifies four recurring purposes of CPD in entrepreneurship education:

1. Deepen teachers’ subject knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship.
2. Train teachers in active, hands-on pedagogies (learning by doing, projects, practice enterprises).
3. Equip teachers to supervise students in practical entrepreneurial experiences, including mini-company schemes or project-based ventures.
4. Help teachers implement new curriculum content after reforms.

Why this matters: entrepreneurship education is action-focused. The teacher’s role shifts from lecturer to facilitator or coach. All this demands new practice.

CPD for school leaders

And here the report becomes critical.

School leaders sit in a strategic position. They can allocate time, money, and legitimacy to entrepreneurship projects. They can build partnerships with local companies. They can drive a culture that tolerates controlled risk.

But CPD for school leaders on entrepreneurship education is rare. Most leadership training still focuses on classic administration: HR, communication with parents, compliance. That helps schools run, but it doesn’t necessarily help heads build an entrepreneurial school culture.

There are some exceptions:

• France runs training that helps school leaders build partnerships with local businesses. Heads are even expected to do an internship in an enterprise as part of tightening school–work links.
• Norway offers “innovation leadership” training that treats entrepreneurship skills as core to leading change in a constantly shifting environment. It frames the school as a learning organization and the head as an architect of change.
• Italy’s new high training school for education (Scuola Superiore della Formazione Insegnanti) issues guidance saying school leaders must gain knowledge aligned with EU competence frameworks, including EntreComp, and use it to drive pedagogical innovation and better learning outcomes.

Still, overall, the report says support for principals is the weak link. Without principals, entrepreneurship teachers become “lone soldiers” and impact stays local.

Training and capacity for entrepreneurship education

Dimension	What the report observes
Teacher competence frameworks mentioning entrepreneurship education	Rare. Only Estonia, Poland, Norway (general frameworks) and Austria (specialised entrepreneurship-teacher framework) include explicit references.
CPD for teachers on entrepreneurship education	Referenced in regulations/schemes in 19 systems; 15 define specific learning objectives for entrepreneurship education training.
CPD for school leaders on entrepreneurship education	Uncommon. Where it exists, it often focuses on partnering with business or leading innovation, not on day-to-day curriculum leadership.
Stated policy risk	Without leadership support, entrepreneurship education risks staying optional, extracurricular, and teacher-driven. 1761240732715

Whole-school approach and real-world practice

Entrepreneurship competence is defined as transversal and action-oriented. So the report goes beyond “what’s in the textbook.” It rather asks: do schools create spaces where students actually do entrepreneurship, not just hear about it? This is where the whole-school approach comes in.

What is a whole-school approach

A whole-school approach means embedding entrepreneurship education into every dimension of school life:

• curriculum and teaching,
• governance and school strategy,
• extracurricular programmes,
• partnerships with businesses, NGOs, and the wider community.

This follows EU guidance that schools succeed when all actors – learners, teachers, heads, parents, community partners – work together, and when learning also happens through projects, communities, and real environments.

But: only about one-third of education systems provide specific national guidance to schools on how to build such a whole-school approach to entrepreneurship education. Where guidance exists, it most often focuses on how to involve external partners, especially businesses. Guidance aimed directly at school leaders on how to integrate entrepreneurship into the school strategy is rarer.

Financial incentives or labels/awards for schools that adopt a whole-school entrepreneurship approach are also rare.

Practical entrepreneurial experience

This is the high-impact zone for long-tail keywords like practical entrepreneurial experience in secondary education.

The report defines practical entrepreneurial experience as students planning, launching, running, or simulating some form of venture or project with real-world relevance, ideally with partners from outside school (businesses, NGOs, local community actors).

3 key findings:

• In most systems, students can access practical entrepreneurial experiences either inside the curriculum or as extracurricular activities (especially in secondary education).
• But these experiences are often optional. They are more frequently delivered as extracurricular activities than as compulsory curriculum components.
• The higher the education level, the more likely students are to get these experiences. Primary pupils rarely get structured “run a mini-company” moments. Upper secondary students do.

Examples:

• Latvia: in lower secondary, “Social sciences” includes compulsory practical entrepreneurial experiences. In upper secondary, “Social sciences I” and “Job project” extend this, and Junior Achievement Latvia runs trade fairs where students pitch and sell.
• Poland: in general upper secondary, the core “Business and Management” course includes project management, customer interviews, simulations, and requires students in the advanced track to implement either a business or a social venture project. External partners include banks, chambers of commerce, and start-ups.
• Italy: all liceo students take a compulsory pathway called “Path for transversal skills and orientation.” The entrepreneurship element is offered as one option inside that broader pathway. So the framework is obligatory, but the entrepreneurial branch is not.
• Montenegro: entrepreneurship is written as a cross-curricular area in primary education, with the stated learning outcome that the pupil can develop and implement an entrepreneurial project. Schools run entrepreneurship clubs, fairs, round tables, etc., with help from NGOs, local businesses, and the broader community.

Across systems, businesses are the most frequently cited external partners in national guidance. NGOs, parents, and community actors are mentioned too, but less consistently. This shows how entrepreneurship education for young people in Europe is still often framed through business exposure, and not only civic or social value creation.

Where Europe stands now and what needs to happen next

The report closes with two messages: encouragement and a warning.

Progress

• Entrepreneurship education is no longer fringe. Most countries have strategies, reforms, or initiatives pushing it.
• Entrepreneurship education is in the curriculum in every system studied. It’s either a cross-curricular theme, a dedicated subject, or both.
• Practical entrepreneurial experiences exist in most systems in some form, especially by secondary level.
• Many countries have started writing entrepreneurship into teacher CPD offers, and some into leadership training.
• The EU’s Union of Skills agenda and upcoming Teachers and Trainers Agenda plan to lean on this work to tie entrepreneurship competence to resilience, competitiveness, and preparedness.

Structural gaps

• Schools tend to emphasize financial and economic literacy, budgeting, and basic business operations. They underplay “vision,” “spotting opportunities,” and “coping with uncertainty and risk,” especially in primary and lower secondary. Those are exactly the higher-order entrepreneurial abilities the EU says it wants: anticipation, resilience, agency.
• Practical entrepreneurial experience – that is the moment students actually do something real – is often not compulsory. It’s after school, in a club, or in an elective. That means access depends on the school, the teacher, and sometimes the local ecosystem. Not every student gets it.
• School leaders are not systematically equipped or incentivized to drive a whole-school approach to entrepreneurship competence. Without leadership, entrepreneurship stays patchy, teacher-driven, and vulnerable to being cut.
• National guidance for a whole-school approach to entrepreneurship education exists in only about a third of the education systems. Funding and formal incentives are even rarer.

What the report implicitly recommends

1. Move from optional to core. Stop treating entrepreneurship as an extracurricular add-on or an optional module. Make applied entrepreneurial learning part of the compulsory curriculum at multiple stages, not just late secondary.
2. Start earlier. Bring “vision,” “spotting opportunities,” and “coping with uncertainty” into primary education, not only “how money works.” Treat entrepreneurial mindset as early-life agency, not late-teen career grooming.
3. Train school leaders, not just teachers. Give heads concrete CPD and governance guidance on how to build partnerships, secure resources, and embed a whole-school approach to entrepreneurship competence. Otherwise, entrepreneurship education depends on heroic individual teachers and dies when they leave.
4. Finance the whole-school approach. Provide funding lines, labels, awards, and recognition to schools that deliver sustained practical entrepreneurial experience for all learners, including those who are not naturally drawn to business.
5. Treat entrepreneurship as a civic and social competence, not only an economic one. Keep business links, but widen the frame: social innovation, community problem-solving, sustainability, democratic participation. The EU line is clear: entrepreneurship competence is about turning ideas into value for others, in any sphere of life.

The bottom line

The story in 2025 is not “Europe forgot entrepreneurship in schools.” It’s rather quite the opposite. Entrepreneurship education in European schools now sits in strategies, reforms, curricula, CPD catalogues, national competitions, and even primary school descriptors.

The real story is its distribution and depth.

Financial literacy and basic business skills are spreading fast in classrooms. Vision, risk navigation, initiative under uncertainty, and hands-on project ownership are not spreading at the same speed, and they’re still often treated as extras.

The report concludes that Europe can’t afford to leave those higher-order entrepreneurial abilities to chance. To build a resilient, competitive Union of Skills, every learner should get the chance to practice entrepreneurship and not just hear about it.

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