Paper Title
Effectiveness Of Early Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract
The present research, which is a field experiment, is designed to identify the appropriate and relevant objectives that need to be pursued through entrepreneurial activities targeting elementary school children.The current study assesses the effectiveness of early entrepreneurship education. To do so, children aged 11 and 12 attended an entrepreneurial program and completed two versions of the same questionnaire before and after the program. We measured the development of three outcome sets of skills: non-cognitive entrepreneurial skills, cognitive entrepreneurial skills and intentions to become an entrepreneur. The change in the dependent variable (the three sets of skills) is measured by the difference in this scale between using paired-sample T test. Gender and parents' occupation were controlled for.The findings of the present study confirm that late childhood (11-12 year-old) seems to be the adequate period in order to develop self-efficacy, a non-cognitive skill required to become an entrepreneur. The skill levels increased to a larger extent for the students� self-efficacy after the program as measured by the self-reported scores on three different sets of entrepreneurial skills scales. Nonetheless, cognitive entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial intentions did not change after the program.It should be mentioned that the effects of only one specific program were assessed in the present study, while different programs may yield different findings; hence the importance of new research based on different entrepreneurial programs.Cognitive and non-cognitive entrepreneurial skills as well as entrepreneurial intentions may develop through different life stages; non-cognitive entrepreneurial skills are best developed at primary level.The above results suggest that these entrepreneurial programs and courses do not seem to be effective as an educational initiative to promote and develop children entrepreneurial skills and intentions.The presented field-experiment provides a case for further educational activities fostering entrepreneurship that public policy makers ought to take into account while developing and reforming elementary school curriculum.The presented study is the first of its kind in the Moroccan context to assesses the impact of early entrepreneurship education o the development of cognitive and non-cognitive entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial intentions.