Yesterday I received a question in my inbox: Blanka, thank you for your e-book. Do you have a winning idea for the next KA1 deadline?

The winning idea has roots in your school needs. Always! However, it is important to communicate your idea in the KA1 application form using Erasmus+ language. In the process of writing your application see:
1. Erasmus+ programme priorities and
2. national priorities of your national agency.

Then think, how can you present your idea through the lens of those priorities.

Here are the 2020 Erasmus+ priorities for school education (from 2020 annual work programme, p. 43):

• Reinforcing the development of key competences: cross-curricular collaboration, creativity and innovative learning approaches and environments, cooperating with stakeholders in local communities and abroad, supporting teachers in delivering competence based teaching and developing assessment and validation of key competences.
• Strengthening the profile of the teaching professions, including teachers, school leaders and teacher educators, for example by: making careers more attractive and diverse; strengthening selection, recruitment and evaluations (models of staff appraisal, assessment and feedback); enhancing teachers’ initial education and continuous professional development and linking its different phases; facilitating and significantly increasing teacher mobility, including by overcoming remaining obstacles; supporting teachers in developing innovative teaching and assessment methods, especially to promote competence-oriented teaching and learning; strengthening leadership in education, including distributed leadership and teacher leadership.
• Promoting a comprehensive approach to language teaching and learning, building on the increasing linguistic diversity in schools, for example by: encouraging early language learning and awareness; developing bilingual teaching options, especially for border regions and/or in areas where inhabitants use more than one language; mainstreaming the use of new technologies to support language learning; supporting the integration of the language dimension across the curricula; focusing on reaching adequate competence levels by the end of compulsory education; promoting the creation of language aware schools.
• Increasing the levels of achievement and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM): promoting effective and innovative pedagogies and assessment; promoting the STE(A)M approach to education through interdisciplinary teaching of STEM in cultural, environmental, economic, design and other contexts, with the involvement of all academic disciplines. 
• Tackling early school leaving and disadvantage, enabling success for all learners, including children with a migrant background: strengthening collaboration among all actors within schools, as well as with families, and other external stakeholders; improving transitions between different stages of education; fostering preventive and early intervention approaches; supporting networking of schools which promote collaborative and holistic approaches to teaching and learning; improving evaluation and quality assurance. 
• Developing high quality early childhood education and care systems: supporting initial and continuing professional development of all staff involved in organising, leading and providing early childhood education and care.
• Building capacity for promoting and facilitating recognition of learning periods abroad. 
• Developing strong quality assurance systems to achieve high-quality inclusive education. 

European development plan is a strategic vision of internationalization and modernization of your school.

​From the Erasmus+ programme guide and from our blog Tips you need for valuable European development plan you know which areas should it cover. In this blog we prepared some questions that might help you think when preparing the European development plan.

Questions for European development plan in KA1 Erasmus+ mobility application:

• What our school needs?
• Where are the barriers?
• Where do we want to go and why?
• Do we want to attract new target groups? Do we want a different approach to existing target groups or stakeholders?
• In which areas we are competent? In which areas we need additional skills?
• Where are we now? Which goals do we want to achieve? By when?
• Who needs new knowledge? Who can share?

Plans for mobility:

• Where can we get missing competencies?
• Why in another country and not at home?
• How can we get missing competencies in another country? Which activities are the most suitable?
• Who in another country practices useful activities for our needs?
• In how many countries are those best practices?
• Which best practice is the most suitable for us?
• Which employees will go to another country, to which activity and why?

After mobility:

• How will you implement new knowledge and skills to your school?
• How exactly will the change look like?
• What will be the impact of teacher's mobility on students?
• In what ways will be the activities at your school better because of the mobility?
• How will you measure the change?
• How will you ensure the impact on teachers, stakeholders and broader environment?

Source: Cmepius, Slovene national agency

Project summary is the first thing evaluators read. The project summary therefore makes a first impression of a quality of your mobility project.

Read some good examples of project summaries from confirmed KA1 mobility applications.

KA1 mobility projects with high points:

• Out of the box (100 points)
• Constitutions – The new rules and tools for teachers (100 points)
• Step by step on the way to success (98 points)
• European Training for an Inclusive Education (95 points)

​Confirmed KA1 mobility projects with clear summaries, but we don't know how many points they received:

• PromETools - promoting educational tools
• Empowering Educators to Empower Students
• Learning with a personal touch
• Integration of multiculturalism in school

Advice: start writing project summary at the beginning of your process. At the beginning you have fresh mind and you are not fed up with all the details yet. At the beginning your ability of making good big picture is the highest. At the end people are usually drained out with all the details and they want to conclude as soon as possible which consequently leads to copy-paste summary from other parts of the application. Please, don't do that. Evaluators have to see the big picture clearly in order to get a positive impression about the quality of your mobility project.