Resume
The study comprises a survey among participating schools and four in-depth case studies in which interviews were conducted with the school board, coordinators, teachers, and pupils to collect impact stories. Impact was measured based on a model in which we considered the following aspects:
- Current situation
- Change
- Contribution of Erasmus+/eTwinning to the current situation
- Wider impact.
An invitation for the survey was sent to all 750 schools that participated in Erasmus+/eTwinning in the period 2014-2019. In total, the response includes 47 schools in primary education, 140 in secondary education and four schools which offer both.
Conclusions
- Schools are in varying phases of development in terms of their embedding of Internationalisation: primary education generally has further to go in terms of the organisational embedding of internationalisation compared secondary education, but has taken bigger steps in terms of the internationalisation of education.
- Schools see that Erasmus+/eTwinning makes a substantial contribution to their organisation, teachers, quality, and the embedding of specific themes in education. In PE, the impact is mostly on educational content, and this holds particularly true for schools that so far have only limited experience with Erasmus+ and eTwinning. In SE, the impact is mostly on the organisation, and this mainly applies to schools scoring high on their level of organisational embeddedness of internationalisation.
- Schools experience a strong impact of Erasmus+/eTwinning on their organisation, teachers, and their educational quality and themes, resulting in a measurable effect on pupils.
- Schools see impact primarily within their own organisation, followed by local policy development and finally at other schools (sharing of experiences).
- Schools are positive about the programme and NA Erasmus+’s role therein.
Recommendations
- The NA Erasmus+ could stimulate schools more to learn from each other’s experiences. The wider impact on other schools is rated lowest. And this when schools could learn so much from each other. Facilitating short Peer Learning Activities around specific themes could support schools in this learning process.
- For schools taking their first steps toward internationalisation it is often difficult to take the next step in the organisational embedding of learned international lessons. The NA Erasmus+ could lend schools a hand to stimulate institutional embedding of internationalisation. One of the suggestions from schools is that they would like to have a tool to create greater support for internationalisation and take another step.
- The NA Erasmus+ could play an important facilitatory role in increasing impact at the programme level by enabling schools to better link project results to national policy in PE and SE. This could, for instance, involve linking the outcomes of various projects on comparable themes and have schools jointly introduce these outcomes into local, regional, and national policy discussions.
- The NA Erasmus+ could adjust its message to schools regarding the impact of internationalisation. One aspect that could be given a greater role in the communication is that impact requires a long-term commitment and results often only become apparent after several projects or several years of involvement.
Downloads
- Report The Impact of Erasmus+ and eTwinning on schools 2MB / pdf Download
More information?
Looking for more information about this project? Get in touch: onderzoek@erasmusplus.nl.
