School, growing Erasmus mobility for pupils and teachers

With the start of the school year, the mobility and cooperation activities of the Erasmus+ Programme, which involve the school world in all its components, also come into their own. The year 2025 confirms in Italy the growth in the volume of activities with constant increases in the study opportunities in Europe addressed to pupils and training activities for teachers and school staff."The data - declares the Director General of the Erasmus+ National Agency Indire, Flaminio Galli - confirm in a clear and encouraging way the constant and structural growth of the Italian participation in the Erasmus+ Programme in the school education sector. With more than 127,000 Italian participants (including headmasters, teachers, pupils and school staff) from 2021 to date, Erasmus+ is not only a mobility programme for the school world, but a driver for educational innovation, professional development and personal growth. Thanks to Erasmus it becomes tangible of a cultural change in the education system where Europe represents a concrete dimension of the educational and professional experience. The girls and boys who leave, as well as the teachers who are trained, return to the classroom with new skills, new ideas and a new vision of their role"..

Erasmus+ Accreditation is the gateway to international mobility projects funded under Key Action 1 as part of a long-term strategy to support pupil and school staff mobility to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Once accreditation has been obtained as an individual institution or as a consortium coordinator, it is sufficient to submit an annual budget request to the Erasmus+ National Agency INDIRE.

By the deadline of 8 October 2024, out of more than 700 applications submitted, 371 new institutions had received accreditation. A total of 1,773 institutions are accredited for the school sector in Italy as of 2021.

By the deadline of 19 February 2025, 1,655 funding requests for accredited mobility projects had been approved (+26.7% compared to 2024) out of the applications submitted by accredited Institutes (this number adds up the Institutes and Consortia accredited in the years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024). The committed budget in 2025 amounts to over 51 million euro and will support 11,084 school teachers and staff (+33%) to gain training experience in structured courses, job shadowing or teaching in other Programme countries. In addition, 21,583 pupils (+36%) are leaving for Erasmus+ mobility experiences in European schools, both short-term and long-term (up to one school year).

This type of project paves the way for the participation of schools that have never attempted European projects before and represents a direct and simple way to benefit from the Erasmus+ programme and European mobility experiences for pupils and school staff. Of the 677 applications received by the deadline of 19 February 2025, the Erasmus+ Agency INDIRE approved 207 project applications. The budget distributed to the approved projects amounts to about 9 million euros and supports the mobility of 5,000 participants from the world of education equally distributed among pupils, teachers and school staff. In particular, students are involved in group mobility, short-term individual mobility and long-term individual mobility. Teachers and school staff are involved in training experiences in structured courses, job shadowing and teaching. Among them, job shadowing represents a training activity that has been growing steadily over the years, characterised by non-formal learning, which enables school staff to observe the working methods of European colleagues and to acquire new teaching, evaluation and school organisation strategies.