Mobility project for school education staff Mobility projects allow schools to give their teachers and other educational staff opportunities and incentives to acquire new competences linked to the needs of the school. School management should play an active role in planning, supporting and following up the mobility project. In order to ensure and maximise the impact of these activities on professional development of all staff, schools should make sure that after the mobility the competences acquired by their staff are well disseminated across the school and integrated into the school teaching practice. Before applying, schools should carefully think about how many of staff can realistically participate within the duration of the project (i.e. 1 or 2 years), what kind of activities they would engage in and how these activities could be effectively followed-up at home. At application stage, applicant organisations will need to provide indicative numbers, types and destination countries of planned mobility activities. If the National Agency selects the mobility project and confirms the budget requested, the beneficiary can start the selection of participants and the detailed organisation of the activities. 1. Organisational Support The organisational support grant is a contribution to costs incurred by the institutions in relation to activities in support of staff mobility. For example: preparation and follow-up of the European Development Plan; organisational arrangements with partner institutions (mainly in case of job-shadowing and teaching assignments); providing information and assistance to staff; selection of staff for mobility activities; preparation of mobility agreements to ensure the quality and recognition of mobility activities; linguistic and intercultural preparation for mobile staff; facilitating the integration of incoming mobile staff in the school; ensuring efficient mentoring and supervision arrangements of mobile participants; supporting the reintegration of mobile participants and building on their acquired new competences for the benefit of the school, teaching staff and pupils. 2. Before Mobility A: European Development Plan Before applying, a school or a national mobility consortium coordinator must develop a European Development Plan; this plan is part of the application form. This section indicates how the planned mobility activities are inscribed in a wider and long-term strategy of development and modernisation of the school(s) involved in the project. 1
2 Erasmus+ Programme Guide This European Development Plan will be an important part of the evaluation of grant applications and should provide information on: the needs of the school(s) in terms of quality development and internationalisation (e.g. as regards management competences, staff competences, new teaching methods or tools, European dimension, language competences, curriculum, organisation of teaching, training and learning, reinforcing links with partner institutions) and how the planned activities will contribute to meeting these needs; the impact expected on pupils, teachers and other staff, and on the school overall; the way schools will integrate the competences and experiences acquired by their staff into their curriculum and/or the school development plan; the way etwinning is going to be used in connection with the planned mobility activities, if relevant (see the section below). B: etwinning etwinning promotes school collaboration and school networking in Europe through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It provides advice, ideas and tools to make it easy for schools to set up partnerships and start collaborative projects in any subject area. In connection with a mobility project, etwinning allows to: find potential partners/receiving organisations abroad and work together with them before applying for funding, in order to improve the quality and impact of the planned projects; use the available project tools to implement more strategic projects and better exploit the inputs from partners; prepare the outgoing staff, for instance through communication with the receiving organisation (learning more about the receiving country and receiving organisation, discussing and agreeing on activities to carry out), participate in online learning events related to their mobility; cooperate intensively among all schools involved during and after the staff mobility project. No formal application is required to use etwinning, all schools need to do is register in the etwinning portal: http://www.etwinning.net.the European etwinning portal is a fully multilingual website offering collaboration tools and services through which teachers register, find partners and work together with them. It also serves as a meeting point where all interested teachers can share resources, discuss and find partner schools. etwinning assists schools both at European level, through the Central Support Service, and at national level, through the National Support Services. All teachers can benefit from the services, training, recognition and tools provided by the etwinning national and European Support Services. For more information about these Services, see the section "What other bodies are involved in the implementation of the Programme?" in Part A of this Guide. C: Conditions of participation of staff Selection The sending school is responsible for selecting the staff undertaking mobility activities. The selection process must be fair, transparent, coherent and documented and shall be made available to all parties involved. The profile of participants must correspond to the eligibility criteria set out in part B of this guide. The sending school should define the selection procedure, i.e. how staff will be
invited to apply, the documentation that the applicants need to submit and how it will be treated. Erasmus+ The school should define the criteria to be considered in the selection process. General criteria might be: motivation, clear goals for the mobility, willingness to share the experience upon return. It is strongly recommended to form a selection committee, which could also involve external people, rather than letting one staff member take the decision alone. In addition to these general criteria, there may be specific criteria linked to the nature or purpose of the mobility project (i.e. relevance of the activities planned by an individual staff member to the needs of the school and other criteria defined by the school). Both the general and the specific criteria must be agreed and shared by all those involved in the selection process and should be clearly communicated to the applicants. Sharing or discussing selection criteria and their rationale with the receiving organisation may facilitate preparation of the activities. There should be a written record of the selection process in case of possible internal complaints. Mobility agreement When the participant is selected, s/he should, with the help of the sending school (and the partner organisation if the mobility is a teaching assignment or a job-shadowing) formally agree on the type of training to be undertaken and its content, clarify how s/he will prepare for this training, how the knowledge/competences acquired will be disseminated across the school and outside, and what will be the benefits of participation at institutional and individual level. They should also agree how the training will be evaluated and recognised by the sending school. This agreement should be established before the start of a mobility activity. Its main aim is that the sending school, the receiving organisation and the participant clarify expectations and ensure that the stay abroad is meaningful. Mobility Tool+ At the earliest when the participants are selected, the beneficiary organisation must encode general information regarding the participant and the type of mobility activity s/he will carry out (e.g. participant name, destination, duration of the mobility, etc.) into Mobility Tool+. Mobility Tool+ will support the beneficiary in the management of the Erasmus+ mobility activities. The beneficiary organisation is also responsible for updating Mobility Tool+ with any change occurred to participants or activities during the lifetime of the mobility project. Beneficiaries will be able to generate prefilled reports from Mobility Tool+ based on the information they have provided. Mobility Tool+ will also generate reports to be filled in by the participants in mobility activities. More information about Mobility Tool+ and how to access it will be provided in the grant agreement between the National Agency and the beneficiary. 3. After Mobility 3
Erasmus+ Programme Guide A: Recognition of learning outcomes The sending and receiving organisations involved should agree on issuing a Europass Mobility certificate at the end of the mobility. For more information on how to proceed, consult the Europass website: http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home B: Reporting At the end of the period abroad, all staff members who have undertaken a mobility activity are required to complete and submit a final report. Those who fail to submit the report may be required to partially or fully reimburse the EU grant received. Reimbursement shall not be requested when a staff member has been prevented from completing her/his planned activities abroad due to a case of force majeure. Such cases shall be reported by the sending school or national mobility consortium coordinator and be subject to written acceptance by the National Agency. 4
Erasmus+ 5