Did you know even high school students start up new businesses on their own in Sweden?

Photo: Adelsö Design

In Sweden, surprisingly entrepreneurship education is provided not only for college students, but also for elementary and high school students.

This is because they believe that young people’s startup can become the lifeblood of the economy. They deem that this sort of education should be offered to children at an early age.

Peter Drucker mentioned that entrepreneurship can be acquired through education. Sweden has practiced this and achieved splendid results.

Since 1990, the government has been geared toward strategic R&D by collaborating with industry and academia, and has promoted startups. Now the number of startups (per capita) is four times as much as in Japan.

Source: Ungforetagsamhet: Company program 2015-2016 Fact Sheet/ Antal elever = The number of students

Company Program is an educational program in entrepreneurship provided by NPO Junior Achievement for elementary and high school students all over Sweden. Junior Achievement started offering this program from 1980.

Every year, 25,000 high school students (one out of four), which account for 8% of all Swedish high school students, founded thousands of companies as part of entrepreneurship education and they experience the management of a firm during an academic year.

In order for students to join this very practical program, registration is needed. The registration usually opens on 1 September, but the process is very simple.

Register at Ung Företagsamhets website
Pay the registration fee of 300 SEK per company (not per person).
State your company name when you pay the registration fee through your bank.
Ready to start working on your business.
According to Ungforetagsamhet, in all categories (except for regional offices), the number has increased recently. Their 2016-2017 fact sheet shows

Number of Junior Achievement regional offices: 24(24)
Number of student companies: 8,603 (8,243)
Number of student participants: 27,769 (26,430)
Number of active Company Program teachers: 1,657 (1,648)
Number of mentors: 8,991 (7,420)
Number of schools offering Company Program:581 (607)
Number of total participants since 1980: circa 350,000
2016/2017 (2015/2016 numbers in parenthesis)

Every year, a qualifying competition is also held and it motivates students’ entrepreneurial acumen.

They actually experience establishing a company, running a business, earning money, paying taxes and even liquidating a company.

The reason why the program includes liquidation is to let students experience how it feels to deal with customers when closing a business.

Interestingly enough, the business area is very diverse.

Read more → https://ochimusyadrive.com/sweden-company-program-junior-achievement-ung-foretagsamhets/