Socrates

Socrates is Europe's education programme, which involves around 30 European countries. Its main objective is to promote lifelong learning, encourage access to education for everybody, and help people acquire recognised qualifications and skills. Socrates also seeks to promote language learning, and to encourage mobility throughout the EU.

Socrates promotes European co-operation in all areas of education. This co-operation takes different forms: mobility (moving around Europe), organising joint projects, setting up European networks (sharing ideas and good practice), and conducting studies and comparative analyses.

In practice, Socrates offers people grants to study, teach, undertake a placement or follow a training course in another country. It provides support for educational establishments to organise teaching projects and to exchange experiences.

It helps various associations to organise activities on educational topics, etc. There is only one general rule: only activities which have a European dimension based on Europe-wide co-operation can receive financial assistance.

Socrates targets all forums of learning, ranging from nursery school to university. This includes adult education, which often involves more informal pathways. Those who can benefit from Socrates include:

• Pupils during compulsory schooling, students, people of all ages who want to return to learning;
• Teachers being trained or already working; administrative and managerial staff involved in education;
• Educational establishments of all types;
• External interested parties: civil servants and decision makers; local and regional authorities; parents' associations; the social partners; the business sector; associations and NGOs

Socrates is made up of eight separate programmes:

• Comenius: school education
  
  
• ERASMUS: higher education
  
  
• Grundtvig: adult education and other education pathways
  
  
• Lingua: learning European languages
  
  
• Minerva: information and communication technologies in education and open and distance learning
  
  
• Observation and innovation of education systems and policies
  
  
• Joint actions with other European programmes
  
  
• Supplementary measures

Observation and Innovation

This Socrates action focuses on attempts to improve the quality and transparency of education systems in Europe. It also provides support for decision-makers and policy makers in the education sector. The European Commission supports a range of initiatives and operations under this action:

• Analysis of education systems in the various European countries.
• Comparison of education systems and policies (particularly through the Eurydice information network on education in Europe). Eurydice provides reliable, readily comparable information on national education systems and policies. It also acts as an observatory, highlighting both the diversity of systems and their common features.
• Field visits to allow education professionals to expand their knowledge of policies, reforms and developments in other European countries (organised through the Arion programme).
• Use of the Naric network of national centres for the academic recognition of qualifications and periods of learning carried out in other European countries.
• Pilot projects, studies and seminars about issues of educational policy in a European context, e.g., evaluating quality in education or promoting adult education.
• The organisation of initiatives dealing with particular topics, e.g., education and employment, teaching quality or more forward-looking debates about the future of education.

Joint Actions

Joint Actions focus on themes that, by their very nature, are not limited to one field alone, i.e., education, training or youth policy. The European Commission attempts to promote co-operation between its various programmes, i.e., Socrates, Leonardo Da Vinci, Culture 2000 and YOUTH programmes. In this way, an integrated approach for training, education and youth policy can be encouraged.

This integration can be pursued in two ways:

• Proposals for joint projects common to the different programmes. Projects must cover at least two of three areas (education, training and youth policy).
• Projects that meet the criteria of one programme but relate to common themes in other programmes.

Supplementary measures

The European Commission will also provide support for activities that are not formally part of any of the Socrates actions but which are still relevant to the aims of the programme. The support measures cover a wide range of activities:

• Awareness-raising activities to promote co-operation in education (conferences and seminars)
• Support for the dissemination of project results
• Improving programme implementation by providing training in project management or in tackling obstacles
• Forging links between the different actions of the programme

Targeting common aims, such as the promotion of equal opportunities and inter-cultural education.

Rates

Funding and grants for European education exchange programmes and projects vary greatly and you should contact the agencies responsible for more details.

How to apply

Socrates

In Socrates there are two basic types of Actions:

• the "centralised Actions" which are run by the European Commission. Application forms for the centralised Actions can be found on national agency web sites or the relevant European Union web site.
• the "decentralised Actions" which are run by the national agencies. Application forms and information for the decentralised Actions are available from the relevant national agency.

For more information on the application procedures and management of specific Socrates programmes, you should contact the national agency with overall responsibility for the programme.

• Higher Education Authority: ERASMUS and Minerva.
• Léargas: Comenius, Lingua and Grundtvig
• Department of Education and Science: Eurydice and Arion (two Observation and Innovation programmes)