Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026: What It Actually Says About Staff Mobility (KA1)

Most schools never read the Erasmus+ Programme Guide cover to cover. Here’s what its KA1 staff mobility sections actually require, in plain language.

If you’re the one managing your school’s Erasmus+ project, you’ve probably had the Programme Guide open in a browser tab at some point and closed it again. It’s a long document, written for grant assessors as much as for teachers, and most of it isn’t relevant to a school sending a handful of staff on a training course. This post pulls out the parts that actually matter if you’re planning KA1 staff mobility — what the mobility for pupils and staff in school education section is trying to achieve, what standards a mobility activity is expected to meet, and the two different ways a school can access funding.

What KA1 staff mobility is actually meant to achieve

The Guide sets out fairly specific objectives for this action, not just “send teachers abroad.” Two things stand out for schools: strengthening the European dimension of teaching — through inclusion, diversity, and building professional networks across countries — and increasing the quality of teaching and learning itself, by supporting staff development, encouraging new technologies and teaching methods, and helping schools share what works. A third objective sits above both: making learning mobility a realistic possibility for staff and pupils generally, and making sure what’s learned abroad is formally recognised back home.

That last point matters more than it sounds. It’s the reason a course needs to end in a real document, not just a certificate of attendance for the school’s files — more on that in a separate post.

The standards a mobility activity is expected to meet

Every KA1 activity funded under Erasmus+ is expected to follow the Erasmus Quality Standards. In practice, this covers how participants are selected and prepared before they travel, how learning outcomes are defined and evaluated, and how results get shared afterward rather than staying with the one teacher who attended. Schools that have gone through Erasmus accreditation build this into something called an Erasmus Plan — a strategic outline of how they’ll run mobility activities over several years, not project by project.

For a course like ours specifically, the Guide is clear that a course programme can stand in for a full learning agreement — but the activity still has to end with the participant’s learning outcomes formally recognised, usually through a Europass Mobility document. That’s not optional paperwork, it’s a Programme requirement.

Three things that run through every mobility project

Three priorities apply across all Erasmus+ mobility, not just staff training, and the Guide expects organisations to build them in rather than treat them as extras:

• Inclusion and diversity — schools are expected to offer mobility opportunities equitably, and participants with fewer opportunities (financial, health-related, or otherwise) can access additional Inclusion Support funding on top of standard grant categories.
• Environmentally sustainable travel — the Guide recommends low-emission transport for shorter distances and a combination of transport modes for longer ones, with “Green Travel” support available to offset the extra time or cost that takes.
• Digital transformation — digital tools are expected to complement physical mobility, not replace it; the Guide also mentions Digital Opportunity Traineeships for staff specifically building digital skills.

None of these change how a course week runs day to day, but they’re worth knowing if your school’s Erasmus Plan or grant reporting asks how you’ve addressed them.

Two paths to funding — and they’re genuinely different

Schools access KA1 funding one of two ways, and which one applies to you changes how the whole process feels:

Short-term projects run for six to eighteen months and are, in the Guide’s own words, the best choice for organisations applying for the first time or planning a limited number of activities. If your school hasn’t done this before, this is almost certainly your starting point.

Accredited projects are only open to schools holding Erasmus accreditation. Once accredited, a school applies against its own Erasmus Plan each year rather than describing individual activities from scratch — a much lighter application once it’s in place, but accreditation itself is a separate, more involved process.

There’s also a third option worth knowing about: joining an existing Erasmus+ mobility consortium in your country, led by an already-accredited coordinator, without your school applying for accreditation itself. For a lot of smaller schools, this ends up being the most realistic route.

Why this is worth knowing before you book a course

None of this changes what a training week looks like once you’re here. But if your coordinator is writing a European Development Plan, filling in a grant report, or trying to explain to school leadership why a specific course fits the project, being able to point to the actual Guide language makes that conversation a lot easier than “I found a good course online.” Our own walkthrough of the Programme Guide covers how this connects to choosing a course.

If you’re at the stage of comparing course options against an approved project, our upcoming sessions are listed by city and date, and our registration form is short enough to attach directly to an internal proposal.