The effect of entrepreneurship education in schools on entrepreneurial outcomes: a systematic review

This study systematically reviewed 21 quantitative and qualitative articles on the effect of entrepreneurship education in schools. We reviewed short-term effects, focusing on the effect of entrepreneurship education on children and adolescents during or right after exposure to it, as well as long-term effects focusing on the effect in later years. We found the impact of entrepreneurship education in schools to be gender and age sensitive: for female and older pupils, entrepreneurship education has a negative effect on entrepreneurship outcomes compared to male and younger pupils. We further found that a positive effect of entrepreneurship education is generally stronger if the programme under investigation is less achievement oriented. We not only contributed to structuring currently fragmented impact research, but we also identified directions for future research and encouraged those designing entrepreneurship education programmes in schools to take into account the heterogeneity of participants. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.