The Comenius Programme

Breadcrumb

Because educational exchanges are not just for adults, the Comenius programme was created. There is no age limit for travelling and discovering other cultures and even younger students can go abroad as part of their education!

Corps de l'article

Comenius: European school education

Aims

The development of exchanges in school education.

The four main types of partnerships are:

In-service training grants:

These allow different stakeholders in education (teachers, career counsellors etc.) to visit a school abroad to observe the educational model, the operation of the school and attend seminars and conferences for a period of 1 day to 6 weeks.

School Partnerships: As their names suggest, these partnerships are formed between two schools from two European countries (bilateral partnerships) or three European countries (multilateral partnerships). They are concluded for a period of two years.

The benefits of these partnerships are: teachers and pupils from different schools working together on a common subject, teaching staff discussing their teaching methods and pupils learning a foreign language which is not part of their curriculum.

Assistantship: This allows newly-qualified and experienced teachers to go abroad for a period of between 3 months and a year to teach a subject.

Multilateral projects and networks:In the first case, three countries discuss their teaching methods; in the second case, forums are created to allow those involved in the Comenius programme to share their experiences, methods and pedagogy.

Schools are responsible for forming these partnerships. They create a project management committee, identify European partners and submit their application to the Comenius council.