Abstract:

Background:
Enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training is one of four main challenges in European Union (EU) education and training systems by 2020. EE systematic development is important because it is necessary to create new jobs for innovative and dynamic economy. We do need young people who are willing and able to become entrepreneurs and active citizens. Education system is the key for shaping young people’s attitudes, skills and culture. EE, on the other hand, is essential to develop the entrepreneurial mind sets of young people. Therefore, it is important to provide the skills and knowledge that are central to developing an entrepreneurial culture from early age. Supporting development of learning skills, creativity and entrepreneurship at all levels and in all types of education, is set as one of the main goals in Estonian LLL. There is also an EE programme established with a goal to develop systematically EE at all education levels.

Aim:
Purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the preparation process of the EE program in the networking theories context. We discuss and investigate the most effective and efficient solutions to develop and integrate EE in education system, when there is a goal to provide learners knowledge and skills that they need to become an entrepreneur, but also to change the mind set and develop entrepreneurial.

Results:
Literature suggests that EE must be developed in collaboration of the practitioners (entrepreneurs), policymakers (ministries) and implementers (schools). This was taken into account when elaborating EE programme in Estonia.

Methodology:
In the article authors map and analyse the situation of EE in Estonian education system. Authors use case-study approach and for data-collecting different methods were used: document analysis, statistics of EE, interviews etc.

Originality/value:
Although EE is one of the main goals in EU education and training systems, it is not very widely implemented in European countries education systems yet. A case study of Estonian education system is a valuable lesion describing an Estonian case as a good practice and giving suggestions for those countries not so advanced in EE yet.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship education, education policy, European Union, Estonia, case study, networking theories.