Short-term impact of the startUP&go entrepreneurship education programme in South Africa

StartUPgo impact assessment report 2014

The ILO office in Pretoria has supported more than 60 secondary schools in the Free State of South Africa to introduce entrepreneurship education. The objective of the new curriculum called startUP&go is to foster entrepreneurial attitudes, intentions, and competencies. The introduction of the new curriculum was accompanied by a quasi experimental impact assessment with a sample of 17,000 students from treatment and control schools. The results of the first follow up survey done 9 months after the launch of startUP&go show that learners taking the classes seem to be more interested in starting their own business after graduating from schools (a statistically significant increase of 4% as compared to the control group). These short term results are not yet very strong. It is expected that the longer term results will be stronger. The next follow up surveys will also cover labour market effects once the first wave of learners has graduated from school.