School Education

What is School Education?

School Education is a programme aimed at school staff, students, and schools wishing to participate in exchanges abroad, for the improvement and internationalization of teaching methodology, as well as learning methods.

A period of stay abroad is a real turning point in the career of the staff working at your school. It offers the opportunity to consolidate their training and refine their teaching methodology by sending abroad professionals working in preschool, primary, secondary, and professional institutions in the field of Erasmus+ activities through adherence to staff mobility or strategic partnerships

How does staff mobility in School Education work?

If you are a school director, you should know that there are different types of staff mobility available:

• Teaching assignments: allow teaching and educational staff to teach at a partner school in another country. A way for staff to gain knowledge of the processes of other European institutes.
• Training: allows access to structured courses, training events, and observation of the work of colleagues of the partner institution or an organisation in this sector. It is important to emphasize that each employeeof the school can benefit from it and not only teachers.

All activities that are included in these macro-categories can have a minimum duration of 2 days, up to a maximum of 2 months for an individual employee. The important thing is that the employee chooses a period between the start and end dates of the mobility project approved for the institution, which usually remains active for one to two years.

How can you get involved in school education?

There are essentially 3 ways to join and take part in a mobility activity:

• As a Sending Organization: an organization that sends staff and sends an individual application. The institute presents the project, draws up reports on the results, and selects the employees to be sent abroad.
• As part of a consortium, local or regional school authorities and other school coordination bodies can form a consortium of schools in their territory and send a joint application on behalf of these schools. Thus, they remove part of the administrative obligations related to the operation of the project from individual schools.
• As a hosting organization the institution is required to host teachers, trainees, or other trainers from the school environment. To this end, activities may be organized for visiting staff or teaching activities may be entrusted to them. 

What are strategic partnerships in School Education?

It is also possible for your school to launch, organize or join strategic partnerships (we recommend keeping an eye on the various deadlines).

Those are collaborative projects that have a specific focus to raise the quality of teaching and education that happen between organisations and schools from all over Europe 

How do strategic partnerships in School Education work?

The cooperation underlying the partnerships varies according to the involved institutions. Partnerships can be divided into two categories:

Partnerships between schools and other organizations

The partners to choose will depend on the objectives of the project, for example, you can:

• exchange best practices by working with schools
• develop the entrepreneurial spirit of students by collaborating with a company
• develop new teaching methodologies in collaboration with universities

School-only partnerships

In addition to the endless opportunities that these initiatives offer to multiple types of organizations, Erasmus+ proposes a simpler format of partnership, solely dedicated to collaboration between schools. According to this format, it is possible to organize small collaborative projects for a series of small exchanges between students and teachers.

Your school can act as a project coordinator (applicant institution) or act as a partner school.

Most partnerships require a minimum of three organizations (including the applicant) from three countries participating in the programme. Partnerships for exchanges between schools can be carried out from only two schools.

What are the covered expenses?

The necessary expenses to ensure transportation, the performance of activities, room and board are fully covered by the programme.

However, there are cases in which you can benefit from additional fund, based on particular needs or situations, including:

• Support for Exceptional Costs: these are exceptional costs, related to subcontracting or the purchase of goods and services that cannot be provided directly by the organisation for duly justified reasons.

This category also includes:

– the costs related to the financial guarantee that can be requested by the National Agency to the beneficiaries who do not have public body requirements.

– any high travel cost for the participants, including the use of more environmentally friendly means of transport with lower carbon emissions.

For this type of support, the costs are covered with a maximum of 80%, up to a maximum of €50,000. (excluding any cost to get a financial guarantee).

• Inclusion support: additional costs directly related to participants with fewer opportunities and their carers (including travel and accommodation costs which, if justified, are covered at 100%).