Transforming Learning Spaces for the Future of Education

Why this is Erasmus+ eligible

Structured, multi-day programme (5 days) with a pre-defined schedule and learning outcomes — not a passive lecture format.

Built around interaction: participants engage directly with the trainer and with peers from other countries throughout the course.

Transnational by design — open to participants travelling from outside the host country, a core requirement of Erasmus+ mobility funding.

This mobility supports the Key Action 1 school education objectives of “supporting professional development of teachers, school leaders and other school staff” and “supporting the sharing and transfer of best practices in teaching and school development” (Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026, Key Action 1 – Mobility for pupils and staff in school education, Objectives of the action, p. 103). The week brings a published evidence base into that school development work: the University of Salford's HEAD project, which found that the physical characteristics of classrooms explain 16 per cent of the variation in pupils' learning progress over a year. Each participant scores their own classroom against the study's seven parameters, redesigns it within a real budget, scores it again, and leaves with a costed plan sorted into what they can change alone, with one colleague, or only with a budget decision from school leadership — a concrete proposal to share with colleagues on return. The study was carried out in primary schools; adapting its findings to older pupils is part of the week's work.

Overview

The finding comes from the University of Salford’s HEAD study, and this week scores your own room against the same seven parameters, twice.

Monday — you learn the HEAD project’s evidence and score your own classroom against its seven parameters as a baseline.
Tuesday — you work naturalness — light, temperature and air quality — the principle carrying about half the measured effect.
Wednesday — you work ownership and flexibility, and redesign your own room’s layout inside your real budget.
Thursday — you work stimulation — what to take down as much as what to put up — and the digital layer as physical objects.
Friday — you score your redesign against the same seven parameters and present it beside your baseline.

You go home with a scored redesign of your own room and a costed plan sorted into what you can change alone, with one colleague, or with a budget and a signature. A few ordinary photographs of your own classroom are worth bringing; no design background is needed.

Description

A fresh coat of paint and some beanbags read as a redesigned classroom. The research behind genuinely effective learning-space design measures something narrower and far more testable, and most of it is not what a redesign usually spends money on.

Peter Barrett’s HEAD project at the University of Salford surveyed 153 classrooms in 27 primary schools and tracked the progress of 3,766 pupils aged five to eleven. Its finding, stated precisely, is that differences in the physical characteristics of classrooms explain 16 per cent of the variation in learning progress over a year. The report puts that in a more usable form: moving an average child from the least effective space to the most effective one is worth around 1.3 sub-levels — the unit England then used to measure pupil progress — in a year where pupils typically make two.

The study was carried out in primary schools, and it matters where that limit sits. Light, air quality and a sense of ownership behave much the same at any age. The findings on colour and visual complexity shift as pupils get older, and adapting them upward is part of the week’s work rather than an afterthought.

What makes the study usable is that it names its variables: three principles — naturalness, individualisation and stimulation — with seven parameters underneath them, and a known weighting. Naturalness alone carries about half the measured effect, individualisation a little over a quarter, stimulation the rest. The week takes them in that order of importance.

Tuesday is light, temperature and air quality, and the report’s own suggestions show that many of them can be improved at little or no cost. Wednesday is ownership and flexibility, and what they mean in a room of sixteen-year-olds rather than six-year-olds. Thursday is stimulation, where the finding is counter-intuitive and often misread. The relationship is curvilinear: a room can be too stimulating as easily as too dull, so the useful question is usually what to take down rather than what to put up.

One room, scored twice, is what the week produces. A baseline against the seven parameters on Monday, a redesign scored again on Friday, and a plan sorted into three: what you can change alone, what needs one colleague, and what needs a budget and a signature from someone above you. The first list is often longer than expected — worth checking before assuming a budget is needed.

Methodology

Your Own Room Is the Project

Every session is run on the participant's actual classroom, worked from photographs (or one of the example rooms) and its real constraints — which windows open, who controls the heating, what furniture may be moved — rather than on an idealised space.

Scored, Not Admired

The seven parameters are used as a measure throughout, so a redesign can be compared with the room it replaced instead of being judged on how it looks in a photograph.

Biggest Levers First

The week follows the weighting the research found rather than the order a catalogue would suggest, which is why it starts with light and air quality and reaches furniture later.

What you'll take home

Score your own classroom against the seven design parameters and record a baseline you can compare against later.

Diagnose the naturalness set — light, temperature and air quality — in your own room, and know what to ask for and who to ask.

Redesign ownership and flexibility within a real budget, adapted to the age group you actually teach.

Apply the curvilinear stimulation finding: decide what to remove from a room, not only what to add, and defend the decision with the evidence.

Daily programme

Icebreaker: each participant shows one photo of their own room (or picks one of the example rooms) and guesses which single change a designer would make first; guesses are checked against the score at the end of the day
The HEAD project: 153 classrooms, 27 primary schools, 3,766 pupils aged five to eleven — and what "explains 16% of the variation in learning progress" does and does not mean
The SIN principles — naturalness, individualisation, stimulation — and the seven parameters underneath them, with the weight each principle carries
Why the stimulation finding is curvilinear, and why "more colour" is the most common wrong conclusion drawn from this research
Practicum: each participant scores their own classroom against the seven parameters — four from their photographs (or the example room you picked, whose card gives all seven readings), and light, temperature and air quality from memory as a first estimate, to be checked back at school with the audit routine built on Day 2 — and records the baseline they will design against

Warm-up in pairs: name the one physical thing about your own classroom that bothers you most, then the room sorts the answers into light, temperature, air and noise — regrouping the group and building today's agenda from it
Why naturalness carries about half of the whole measured effect, and which of its fixes cost little or nothing
Light: daylight, glare and orientation — and what can be done in a room whose windows cannot be moved
Temperature and air quality: how to tell whether your room actually has a problem rather than assuming it does
Working session: building a simple audit routine a teacher can run in their own room over one week, using observation and a timetable, with a simple thermometer or CO2 meter if the school has one
Who to ask and what to ask for: the caretaker, the head teacher, and whoever owns the building (a local authority, a municipality or a ministry, depending on your system)

Warm-up: in pairs, physically rearrange two chairs and a table into a new layout in under two minutes, then say what made it fast or slow
Ownership: what makes a room feel like the pupils', and why displaying their own work is not decoration
Flexibility: the difference between furniture that is movable and a room that is genuinely reconfigurable by a class in two minutes
Adapting upward: how ownership and flexibility change between a class of six-year-olds and a class of sixteen-year-olds, where the primary-school evidence needs translating
Working session: redesigning your own room's ownership and flexibility on paper, inside your real budget, then reviewed in pairs

Warm-up: each participant picks one of two photos (busier vs calmer wall display) and votes which one they would find harder to concentrate in, then the room compares votes before the day's content
Complexity and colour in practice: displays, walls and ceilings, and the point at which a room tips from stimulating into noisy
The quiet audit: a structured pass over your own photographs deciding what to take down
Inclusion and sensory needs: where the seven parameters and inclusive design agree, and the cases where they pull in opposite directions
The digital layer as physical objects: screens, devices, cabling and charging — what they do to sightlines, glare and the flexibility built on Day 3, and the sustainable choices that cost nothing

Each participant presents their redesign scored against the seven parameters, with the baseline from Day 1 beside it
Critique in small groups: which single parameter would give this specific room the largest gain for the least money, and what the group would cut from the plan
Revision time: participants amend their own plan and costings before taking them home
Course evaluation and reflection on learning
Certification ceremony

Please note: sessions run from 09:30 to 15:00, Monday to Friday, with a break for lunch. Timings can shift a little to suit the venue and the group. If you'd like a specific topic covered, let us know when you apply — the confirmed day-by-day schedule is sent to registered participants ahead of the course.

Certificate: we issue the Certificate of Attendance to everyone who's present for at least 80% of the course — tracked with the daily sign-in sheet (see Certificate & assessment).

Equipment: a few of our courses ask participants to bring a laptop — check the day-by-day programme above, or ask us if you're not sure.

Need a formal invoice or proforma for your school's records? Ask us — we issue official invoices with the participant's name and course details.

Materials & tools

Barrett and colleagues, Clever Classrooms: Summary Report of the HEAD Project (University of Salford, 2015) — the study the week is built on, published free of charge and worked with directly from Day 1

A seven-parameter scoring sheet for your own classroom, built on Day 1 and completed again on Day 5

A costed redesign plan sorted into three: alone, with one colleague, budget and signature

Your own classroom photographs, or one of the example rooms, used as the working material of every session

Certificate & assessment

This is a Certificate of Attendance, not an exam-based qualification — recognition comes from completing the structured programme, not from passing a test. The real, lasting value is in the competencies listed above under What you'll take home.

Erasmus Mobility Academy

Certificate of Attendance

Transforming Learning Spaces for the Future of Education · 5 days · 25 hrs

+ Europass Mobility document

Type your name above — clearly marked "SAMPLE" in the PDF, not an official document.

The real certificate is signed by your trainer and EMA's authorised signatory. Your own signature isn't on this document — it's captured separately, on the Europass Mobility document.

Need to verify a real certificate? Check it online using the serial number and participant's full name, or contact us directly — [email protected], OID E10304561.

Attendance

Tracked using a sign-in sheet with one signature per participant per day (paper or digital). This record is used to issue your Certificate of Attendance and Europass Mobility document. View sign-in sheet (PDF)

Output

Every participant leaves with a completed Dissemination & School Impact Plan — a step-by-step template for applying the course back at your school (see below).

Feedback

An end-of-course evaluation form is sent to every participant after the course ends — a chance to reflect on what you've learned and how you'll apply it, and it helps us keep improving the course for future participants.

Your paperwork

Keep your travel tickets, boarding passes and (if you used green travel) any related receipts — your school or National Agency may ask for these for their own Erasmus+ reporting.

How to prepare

It helps to have a few photographs of your own classroom, several angles, taken on an ordinary day rather than a tidied one — please leave pupils out of the frame. If you do not have your own classroom (or would rather not photograph it), the course supplies a set of example rooms to work from.

If you know them, it helps to have a rough sense of your room's constraints: which windows open, who controls the heating, what furniture may be moved. If you do not know yet, that is itself useful to find out during the week.

No design background is needed. The seven parameters are introduced on Day 1 and used as a checklist from then on.

Practical information

Registration & documents

Not sure how registering works or what paperwork is involved? See our full Registration & Documents guide — from applying to your Certificate of Attendance, in one place.

Invitation letter

Need a formal invitation letter for your school or embassy? Request one — we send it within 2 business days. See a sample (PDF).

Learning Agreement

Prepared by our staff and sent to you and your school once your registration form is submitted — see what it looks like. See a sample (PDF).

Billing & invoicing

We issue official invoices/proformas with the participant's name and course details — ask us. Payment is due in full by bank transfer before the course start date. See a sample (PDF).

Airport transfer

Guidance on getting from the nearest airport to the venue is included in your welcome information.

Accommodation

We can recommend partner hotels close to the venue in the host city — ask us when you apply.

For your school / proposal

School impact

After completing this course, the participating staff member can transfer outcomes directly to their school: a short briefing for colleagues sharing the key takeaways, applying relevant tools or strategies from the programme in their own role, and inclusion of the course materials in the school's professional development resources — turning one person's mobility into a wider institutional gain that supports the school's Erasmus+ objectives. Use the Dissemination & School Impact Plan below to fill in your own — it saves as you go and can generate a one-page summary for your coordinator too.

Prefer a blank, course-independent version of this template? Get it here →

After the course

Participants will receive their Certificate of Attendance and the co-signed Europass Mobility document.

Participants will complete a general course evaluation and event survey.

Participants will receive course materials, videos, photos, and PDF documents in both digital and print formats.

Follow-up support: self-evaluation materials are provided. Depending on the group, an email group may be set up so that participants can keep exchanging ideas.

Frequently asked

This course is an eligible training activity under Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (School Education Mobility) — the course fee, travel and subsistence fall within the eligible cost categories. Whether it is covered depends on your own project's approved grant agreement and your National Agency's rules; we provide all the invoices, attendance records and certificates your National Agency requires for reporting.

B1 is enough — you do not need to be fluent. Trainers speak slowly and plainly, every session is built around doing something rather than sitting and listening, and groups are mixed by nationality so people help each other out. A rough test: if you could follow a staff meeting held in English and ask a question in it, you will be fine here.

Absolutely — group bookings of 3+ from one school or organisation receive priority placement, and we can schedule a dedicated session for groups of 12 or more.

Our courses run on request at our centres in Antalya, İstanbul, İzmir, Mersin, Budapest, Bremen and Rome. Tell us your preferred city and dates and we will arrange a session.

Tuition, all course materials, your Certificate of Attendance, and the co-signed Europass Mobility document. Flights, accommodation and travel insurance are booked separately — we send a vetted hotel list.

You can move to any later session free of charge. Cancellations made 30+ days before the start date receive a full refund; a reduced refund applies closer to the date — see our full Cancellation & Refund Policy for the exact schedule.

This mobility supports the Key Action 1 school education objectives of “supporting professional development of teachers, school leaders and other school staff” and “supporting the sharing and transfer of best practices in teaching and school development” (Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026, Key Action 1 – Mobility for pupils and staff in school education, Objectives of the action, p. 103). The week brings a published evidence base into that school development work: the University of Salford's HEAD project, which found that the physical characteristics of classrooms explain 16 per cent of the variation in pupils' learning progress over a year. Each participant scores their own classroom against the study's seven parameters, redesigns it within a real budget, scores it again, and leaves with a costed plan sorted into what they can change alone, with one colleague, or only with a budget decision from school leadership — a concrete proposal to share with colleagues on return. The study was carried out in primary schools; adapting its findings to older pupils is part of the week's work. Frame it in your own project's terms — your National Agency's current call will confirm exactly how it applies.