‘Entrepreneurship Learning’ to the Sri Lankan education system; sustainable way of promoting entrepreneurship culture through IDB

When promoting the entrepreneurship culture it is compulsory that we got to implant the seeds of entrepreneurship in our education system therefore we will introduce the ‘Entrepreneurship’ subject to schools with the affiliation of the Education Ministry. Our goal should be to make Sri Lanka the ‘best place in Asia for a young entrepreneur to start and grow a business’. 

The stats show that ‘Entrepreneurial Studies’ as a subject was introduced into the school curriculum in 2007 but it hardly reaps the yielded expected results. We firmly believe the reason behind this debacle is mismanagement and improper planning. IDB has a bigger role to play in this; we have twenty five district offices and eighteen Industrial estates throughout the country. This got to happen as a partnership between Education Ministry and the Ministry of Industry and commerce, the syllabus will be prepared for primary and secondary levels and the teaching staff will be trained by IDB. This could either be a pilot project where the initiation could be taken to a different province than Western. Once the teachers are trained and the curriculum is prepared ‘Entrepreneurship’ subject will get established in the school system. Once it is established island wide the schools could coordinate our district offices for further assistance. Since we are represented in all districts through our decentralized mechanism we could assist almost all the schools with their training and curriculum reforms.  Then using our Industrial estates we will provide schools at least two industrial visits per year and from the school days children will get familiar to the factory layouts, machines and the tenacity within a factory environment. 

Countries like Japan, China and the European countries do this more often and their industrialists have higher tendency to teach their younger generation about entrepreneurship in a simplified manner. We have 10,144 total government schools and 4,129,534 school pupils and 237,000 teachers and if the IDB manipulate resources correctly we could give a compact service at least to a considerable amount of schools. Our district officers becoming the coordination hubs and our industrial estates becoming the places where we give live demonstrations. We have a quarterly publication called ‘කර්මාන්ත’ we will construct it’s content in a more constructive and industrious manner and make it available as a reference printed material for school children where they get to know about the inspirational success stories of Sri Lankan entrepreneurs and implant the can do attitude in their mind set.

There is a social misconception that entrepreneurship can never be taught but theory and practice shows us that entrepreneurs can be made but the important question is how they could be made on a strategic basis and how education could help in creating great entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. If education equips students with an entrepreneurial mindset at the outset of their careers, they will be more engaged and take ownership of their own success. Moreover students who will be involved in ways of entrepreneurial learning will be rather enthusiastic about this, as they would find that this kind of learning will be more fun and be experienced as more meaningful than the traditional ways of learning. Entrepreneurial learning; is also a very powerful tool to improve the access of disadvantaged groups to the job market as it was demonstrated by several initiatives. This will also create an entrepreneurial culture in their schools or colleges and in some cases support local start-ups and small businesses. All this requires close cooperation between the different stakeholders in a region and the willingness to enter innovative learning instead of sticking to traditional learning pathways. When the subject of entrepreneurship get established in schools and since the Sri Lankan education system is heavily parent oriented we could change the mind set of parents as well as teachers.

The main objective of the subject, Entrepreneurship is to generate in the students initiative, self-reliance and enthusiasm so as to empower them to become entrepreneurs both in spirit and performance. A number of skills such as observation, evaluation, communication, resource mobilization and management, risk assessment, team building etc. is also to be developed among the students. Leadership qualities, sensitivity to business ethics and adherence to a positive value system are the core issues that the subject should highlight while presenting different concepts related to entrepreneurship. 

To be continued ...