NORWAY - Bergen

Tone Mosebo

Stend Vidaregåande skule

Fanaveien 249

5244 Fana

www.stend.no

Stend Upper Secondary School is located in Fana, close to Bergen. Our school is situated on an old farm. We are providing both vocational training and education for those who want to prepare for further studies. We have 550 students at the age of 16 to 19 years.

Our offers are:

Vocational Programe for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; for Sale's work and Service;

Programe for General Studies; for Sports and Physical Education;

Supplementary programme for general university admission certification;

Classes for students with special educational needs 4 years.

The attitude and knowledge of Entrepreneurship are highly wanted in Norway, and there also is a separate subject called Entrepreneurship, with its own national curriculum. In addition to teaching this subject, many schools do as we do: use Entrepreneurship as a methodology for the students to learn and train creativity, a positive attitude, responsibility, structure, skills and knowledge that are asked the national curriculum in other subjects at level 2.

Our school emphasizes that all vocational students should learn as much as possible through practical lessons and work. We run a farm with a lot of different productions and learning areas, some classes run mini-companies, and we cooperate with local businesses.

Our motivation for participating in this project is that we want to share what we already do in this field, and we want to develop it further by getting knowledge, inspiration and ideas from others, try them out, reflect and adjust practice to increase the learning for our students and to lift up and inspire our teachers.

Many of our students are interested in practical work and to learn new practical skills, but they find it very difficult to acquire the needed knowledge in more theoretical subjects. For these students the experience they get by running a mini-company, and the learning they get from all other kinds of practical work, is extra important.

For some of them the methodology is necessary to help them get a passing grade in all subjects, and thus prevent early school leaving.

All in all; a further development of learning by doing, entrepreneurship and further cooperation with local business are of great importance for our student and therefor for us as a school.

We want to participate in this project with head of department for Programe for nature based production and activities, Torbjørn Litlere, international coordinator who has a long experience from teaching relevant vocational subjects.

Tone O Mosebø, will be the coordinator for this project at the school. She has got a master in agriculture.

Teachers working with teaching entrepreneurial work and other vocational subjects at level 2 in our education. They all have an education at the university level from either livestock (including companion animals), equestrian or outdoor activities/guiding and most of them have worked with young entrepreneurship since 3-8 years. Some have a degree in special needs education.