Teaching Assignments Abroad: The Third Erasmus+ KA1 Mobility Type, Explained

Most conversations about Erasmus+ staff mobility jump straight to job shadowing or structured courses. There’s a third format sitting right between them in the Programme Guide — teaching or training assignments — and it works under a noticeably different set of rules than either of the other two.

What a teaching assignment actually is

The Programme Guide defines it plainly: participants can spend a period of time teaching or providing training to learners at a hosting organisation in another country, in order to learn by completing their tasks and exchanging with peers. Unlike job shadowing (observing a mentor) or a course (attending structured training), the participant is the one delivering lessons or training at the host school — learning by doing the job itself in a different school system.

The duration range that sets it apart

Of the three staff mobility formats for school education, teaching assignments have by far the widest duration window: 2 to 365 days. Job shadowing is capped at 2 to 60 days, and courses and training at 2 to 10 days. That range is what makes teaching assignments the format schools reach for when they want something longer than a one-week placement — anywhere from a short exchange to most of a school year.

Who can take part

Eligible participants include teachers, school leaders, and other non-teaching staff working in school education — teacher assistants, pedagogical advisors, psychologists, Erasmus+ coordinators, school inspectors and counsellors among them. The participant has to be documented as working for, or regularly working with, the sending organisation (a work contract, volunteer agreement, or task description that the National Agency can verify). As with every staff mobility format, a learning agreement has to be settled before the activity, and the achieved learning outcomes recognised afterwards with a Europass Mobility document or equivalent.

Where the funding rules genuinely differ

This is the part that’s easy to miss if you’re used to budgeting for courses. A few funding rules apply specifically to “Courses and training” and specifically don’t extend to teaching assignments — and one goes the other way:

• No course fee. The 80 EUR-per-participant-per-day course fee budget line is explicitly tied to the “Courses and training” format, since there’s no enrolment fee to reimburse when a staff member is teaching rather than attending a course.
• No 50% grant cap. Courses and training funding is capped at a maximum of 50% of the total awarded project grant (or 20,000 EUR for smaller projects). That cap is specific to courses — it doesn’t apply to teaching assignments.
• Linguistic support is available. The 150 EUR linguistic support grant is eligible for job shadowing, teaching and training assignments, and pupil mobility — but “Courses and training” is not on that list. A teacher going abroad to teach can request language preparation funding that a colleague attending a course cannot.
• Preparatory visits are allowed. Preparatory visits can be organised ahead of any staff or learner mobility format except “Courses and training.” A teaching assignment qualifies for a funded preparatory visit; a course booking normally doesn’t.

Why this matters when you’re choosing a format

None of this makes one format “better” — they serve different needs. A structured course gives a predictable, pre-defined learning programme in a fixed number of days; a teaching assignment gives more flexibility on duration and comes with linguistic and preparatory-visit support a course doesn’t. Which one fits depends on whether your staff member needs to learn a method through structured training, or needs to practise applying their own teaching in a different school system for an extended stretch.

If your school is weighing which mobility format fits an upcoming Erasmus+ project, browse our structured courses and job shadowing options, or start a registration once you’ve settled on the right fit.