What is an Erasmus+ project? A guide for schools

An Erasmus+ project is an EU-funded plan through which a school or other organisation applies for a grant from its national agency to run structured learning activities abroad, such as teacher training, job shadowing, or group mobility for pupils. The school holds the grant. The teachers and pupils travel under it.

That one sentence answers the question most coordinators type into a search box. The rest of this guide covers what sits behind it: the project types, who can take part, and what your school actually does, in what order. If you are past the definition stage and want the application mechanics, our Erasmus+ funding pages take you through the routes step by step.

What is an Erasmus+ project, exactly?

Erasmus+ is the European Union’s programme for education, training, youth and sport. It runs in seven-year cycles, and the current one covers 2021 to 2027.¹ A “project” in Erasmus+ terms is a funded plan with a start date, an end date, a set of approved activities and a reporting obligation at the end. Your school describes what it wants its staff or pupils to learn abroad. The national agency approves the plan. The activities then run inside that approved frame.

Most school projects sit under Key Action 1, the strand that funds learning mobility. Three codes matter for schools:

• KA-122 is the short-term route: a project of 6 to 18 months, with up to 30 participants, for schools that do not hold an Erasmus+ accreditation.²
• KA-121 is the accredited route. Schools that hold an Erasmus+ accreditation apply on a simpler annual rhythm instead of justifying a new project every time.
• KA-152 covers youth exchanges for participants aged 13 to 30, run together with a youth organisation rather than through the school timetable.

There is also a Key Action 2, which funds cooperation partnerships between organisations.¹ That is a different undertaking: several institutions building something together over years. Schools running their first project almost always start with Key Action 1, and this guide stays there.

What types of Erasmus+ project can a school run?

Four shapes cover nearly everything schools do under Key Action 1.

Staff training courses. One teacher or a small group attends a structured course abroad, typically a five-day week, and brings the method back. The course should match something in your school development plan, because the application will ask about exactly that.

Job shadowing. A teacher spends several working days at a school in another country, observing how colleagues plan and run their lessons. There is no formal curriculum. The value is seeing real practice in a real classroom.

Group mobility of school pupils. A class travels with its own teachers to a host organisation abroad and follows a planned learning programme. This is not a school trip with a certificate attached; every day of the stay follows learning activities the school agreed in advance.

Youth exchanges (KA-152). Young people aged 13 to 30 meet a partner group abroad around a non-formal learning theme. These run with a youth-work counterpart and use different vocabulary and paperwork than school projects, so treat them as their own category.

Who can take part in an Erasmus+ project?

More people than most schools assume. Eligible sending organisations include public and private schools from pre-school through secondary level, whether general, technical or vocational.² On the staff side, the programme is open to teachers of any subject, school leaders and other school staff. You do not need to be a language teacher, and you do not need prior international experience. On the pupil side, group mobility is built for school classes travelling with their own teachers.

The common thread: the organisation participates, and people travel as part of its project. A motivated teacher can start the conversation, and often does, but the application belongs to the school.

How does a school apply for an Erasmus+ project?

The application goes to the national agency in your own country, not to Brussels. Every programme country has one, and the European Commission lists them all with contact details.³

The sequence looks like this in practice. The school identifies a need it can defend in writing, for example weak CLIL capacity or a stalled internationalisation goal. It chooses the route: a KA-122 application if it holds no accreditation, or a KA-121 grant request if it does. It then submits by the agency’s deadline. The main annual round for short-term projects closes on 19 February at midday Brussels time, and some agencies open a second round in October.² That February date is why experienced coordinators start the internal conversation the autumn before.

What does the application actually ask? Broadly four things. Why: the needs your school wants to address, in its own words. What: the activities you plan, matched to those needs. Who: which staff or pupils will take part and how you will choose them fairly. How: your plan for preparing participants and recognising what they learned. Approved projects also commit to the Erasmus+ quality standards, which cover practical duties like participant selection, preparation and the sharing of results.² None of this requires grant-writing experience. It requires an honest school development plan and a receiving organisation that supplies its half of the paperwork without being chased.

The grant itself is calculated from fixed EU unit costs and depends on things like travel distance and the length of the stay. The amounts vary by country, so your national agency’s published tables are the reference. We walk through the whole money side, including what the school signs up to, in How does Erasmus+ funding work?

What happens during the mobility itself?

By the time anyone boards a plane, the interesting decisions have been made. What remains is delivery, and that is largely the receiving organisation’s job.

A receiving organisation is the partner abroad that hosts the activity: it provides the course, the shadowing placement or the learning programme, plus the documentation your school needs for reporting. Before travel, the school and the participant agree what will be learned and how it will be recognised, and participants get practical preparation for the stay. The programme also offers online language support for people carrying out a mobility.¹ After the stay, participants receive certificates, including Europass documents that are recognised across the EU, and the school reports the outcomes to its agency.

Two details surprise first-time coordinators. First, the reporting is lighter than the word “EU project” suggests; for a short-term mobility it is closer to structured note-keeping than to auditing. Second, the learning programme is binding. If the approved plan says pupils spend mornings in classes, they spend mornings in classes. The beach is for the afternoons.

This is the role EUTA plays in Spain. We are a receiving organisation in Benalmádena on the Costa del Sol, registered with the European Commission (OID E10306993), and we host teacher courses, job shadowing and pupil group programmes on one campus.

How do schools usually start?

Not with a form. The projects that go smoothly usually begin with three unglamorous moves. Someone raises it with the school leadership and gets a yes-in-principle, because the head signs the application. Someone reads the national agency’s pages for ten minutes and notes the next deadline. And someone picks provisional dates 6 to 12 months out, because course calendars and school calendars both fill up.

From there, the path is short: match a course or programme to your school development plan, gather the documents from your receiving organisation, and write the application in the agency’s own language of needs and outcomes. If the funding route is the part that still feels foggy, start with our Erasmus+ funding overview and work outward from there.

What do experienced coordinators do differently?

Six habits separate the schools whose projects run quietly from the ones firefighting in May.

1. They batch. A KA-122 project can include up to 30 participants and run as long as 18 months. Applying once for four teachers and a pupil group costs barely more effort than applying for one person, and the school development story reads stronger.
2. They write the development plan first. The application asks how the mobility serves the school’s needs. Coordinators who reverse-engineer needs from a course they already picked write weaker applications than those who start from a real gap and then shop for the course.
3. They collect the provider’s documents before writing. A receiving organisation should hand over the course description, daily programme and invitation letter on request. If you have to chase for these before the application, you will chase for everything after it too. Treat that first exchange as an audition.
4. They set selection criteria before naming names. Fair, transparent participant selection is one of the Erasmus+ quality standards your school signs up to. Deciding the criteria after colleagues have raised their hands makes it a staffroom politics problem instead of a paperwork line.
5. They submit early in deadline week. Agency helpdesks and application portals are busiest in the final 48 hours. The application does not score higher for being finished at the wire.
6. They collect evidence as they go. Attendance lists, photos and short participant notes gathered during the stay make the final report an afternoon’s work. Reconstructing a week in Spain from memory three months later takes longer and reads worse.

If your school plans to travel every year, one more: look at Erasmus+ accreditation early. KA-121 replaces repeated one-off applications with an annual grant request, and the schools that benefit most are the ones that decided before their second project, not their fifth.

Frequently asked questions

What does Erasmus+ mean?

Erasmus+ is the European Union’s funding programme for education, training, youth and sport, currently running from 2021 to 2027. The “+” marks the 2014 merger of several older EU programmes into one, which is why the name should always carry it.

What is the difference between KA-1 and KA-2 in Erasmus+?

KA-1 funds learning mobility: people going abroad to learn. KA-2 funds cooperation partnerships between organisations that build something together. School mobility projects, including teacher courses and pupil group stays, sit under KA-1.

What are the different types of Erasmus+ mobility for schools?

Three main types: staff mobility such as training courses and job shadowing, group mobility of school pupils, and youth exchanges under KA-152. A single project can combine several of them.

How do you qualify for an Erasmus+ grant?

Your school applies through its national agency, either with a short-term KA-122 project or under an Erasmus+ accreditation (KA-121). Eligibility rules and current deadlines are published on the European Commission’s Erasmus+ site and by each national agency.

Viktor Nyitray has spent more than 15 years managing international study programmes, from Erasmus+ mobility projects to national student subsidy schemes. He has helped thousands of students find the right course, and helped schools secure over €3 million in programme funding along the way.

1. European Commission, Erasmus+ Programme Guide: What is the structure of the Erasmus+ Programme? ↩
2. European Commission, Erasmus+ Programme Guide: Mobility for pupils and staff in school education ↩
3. European Commission: How to apply ↩