How Erasmus+ KA1 Funding Works for Teacher and Staff Mobility Courses

Erasmus+ staff mobility funding follows a clear KA1 structure, but how it actually reaches a school and pays for a course like ours often stays confusing until someone walks through it once.

KA1 stands for Key Action 1, the strand of Erasmus+ that funds learning mobility for staff working in school education, adult education, vocational training and higher education. If you’re a teacher, headteacher, teaching assistant or administrative staff member, this is almost always the funding line your institution will use to send you on a structured course abroad. It’s separate from student mobility and from KA2 partnership projects, though schools sometimes run both at once, which is part of why the terminology gets muddled in staffrooms.

Who actually applies — your school, not you

This is the part that trips people up most often. Individual teachers don’t apply directly to Erasmus+ for KA1 funding. Your school, or a consortium of schools working together, submits an application to its National Agency, and if approved, the school receives a grant that it then allocates to staff mobilities — including sending people on courses. Your job as a teacher is usually to identify a relevant course, get it approved internally as part of the school’s European Development Plan, and then let the administrative side handle the grant agreement and reporting. If your school hasn’t applied before, the first conversation worth having is with whoever manages international projects or your headteacher, not with a course provider.

What the budget actually covers

KA1 grants are typically built from a few standard cost categories: organisational support, travel, and individual support (which covers subsistence — accommodation, meals, local transport during the mobility). course dates pageCourse fees themselves are usually paid from the individual support or a course-fee contribution, depending on how the National Agency structures its call. The exact unit costs, distance bands for travel, and per-day rates are set and updated by each National Agency, not by course providers, so we won’t quote figures here — they genuinely change and vary by country. The one number we can tell you directly is ours: our standard 5-day courses run at €400 per participant, and that fee is designed to sit comfortably within typical KA1 individual support and course-fee allowances, though your school’s grant coordinator will confirm exact eligibility for your specific project.

Where to check the rules that actually matter

We’re not going to guess at deadlines, application windows, or which National Agency handles your country — that information changes and we’d rather send you somewhere reliable than risk giving you something outdated. The official Erasmus+ programme site has current guides, and the National Agencies contact page will get you to the body that actually processes your school’s application. If you’re new to this, reading the current Programme Guide section on KA1 mobility for school staff before you commit to a course is time well spent.

How this plays out in practice with an EMA course

Most teachers come to us after their school’s KA1 application has already been approved, with a grant in hand and a need to choose specific mobilities that match their European Development Plan. Some come earlier, while still building the case for their school’s application, and want a course description and cost breakdown they can attach to the proposal. Either stage works — our lists upcoming sessions across Antalya, Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin, Budapest, Bremen and Rome, which is useful whether you’re planning around an already-approved grant timeline or trying to show a National Agency that concrete, dated options exist.

One practical note: because KA1 grants are tied to a specific project period, timing matters more than people expect. A course that fits perfectly on paper is no use if it falls outside your school’s approved mobility window. We’d rather you check your project dates against our schedule before registering than deal with a reimbursement problem afterward.

Planning tips that save headaches later

• Confirm with your school’s project coordinator which cost category will cover the course fee before you book — organisational support, individual support, and course-fee lines aren’t interchangeable in every National Agency’s system.
• Keep every document: registration confirmation, invoice, attendance certificate, and travel receipts. KA1 reporting is document-heavy, and it’s the school’s problem if paperwork goes missing, but it’s a lot easier if you keep your own copies too.
• If your institution is applying for KA1 funding for the first time, build in extra lead time — first applications tend to need more internal drafting and approval than renewals.
• Ask your coordinator whether your project also supports job shadowing placements alongside structured courses; some KA1 projects combine both types of mobility.

When you’re ready to move from planning to booking, our registration form is where most of our participants start — it’s short, and you can attach it directly to your school’s internal mobility file if that’s what your coordinator needs.

KA1 funding isn’t complicated once you’ve seen the cycle once: school applies, grant is awarded, staff mobilities get planned against it, documentation flows back at the end. The friction is almost always in that first pass through the system. If you’re the one pushing your school to apply, or trying to make sense of a grant that’s already been approved, the National Agency contacts and programme guide linked above are worth bookmarking — they’ll answer the country-specific questions we genuinely can’t.