Alliances for Education and Enterprises

Overview

Objectives

Alliances for Education and Enterprises are transnational, structured and result-driven projects, in which partners share common goals and work together to foster innovation, new skills, a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets. They aim to foster innovation in higher education, vocational education and training, enterprises and the broader socioeconomic environment. This includes confronting societal and economic challenges such as climate change, changing demographics, digitalisation, artificial intelligence and rapid employment changes through social innovation and community resilience, as well as labour market innovation.

The Alliances for Education and Enterprises aim to implement a coherent and comprehensive set of sectoral or cross-sectoral activities, which should be adaptable to future knowledge developments across the EU. They also aim to boost the provision of new skills and address skills mismatches by designing and creating new curricula for higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET), supporting the development of a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets in the EU.

Activities/actions supported

Each Alliance shall implement a coherent, comprehensive and variable set of interconnected activities to enhance innovation in higher education, vocational education and training and enterprises (including large, small and medium sized enterprises and social enterprises) and the broader socio economic environment. The activities should target at least on of the following: boosting innovation; developing a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mindsets, competences or skills; stimulating the flow and exchange of knowledge between higher education, VET, enterprises and research; or identifying resilience-related, market needs and emerging professions.

Anticipated outcomes

Alliances for Innovation will be anchored in strategic and sustainable cooperation among vocational education and training, higher education and enterprises working together to boost the innovation capacity of Europe. They will considerably strengthen the synergies between both educational fields in fostering innovation, new skills, a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets. These Alliances among Higher Education institutions, VET providers and enterprises are expected to contribute to the development of regional eco-systems and directly provide a valuable input to the economy, integrating work based learning.

Institution providing the funding

European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA)

Size of funding

EUR 1,000,000 (for 2 year projects) - 1,500,000 (for 3 year projects)

Conditions

Overview of eligibility criteria

In order to be eligible, applicants must be legally established in a Programme Country (organisations from Belarus cannot apply). Furthermore:

• Alliances for Education and Enterprises must cover at least 4 EU Member States and third countries associated to the Programme, involving a minimum of 8 full partners.
• The partnership must include at least 3 labour market actors (enterprises or companies, or representative intermediary organisations, such as chambers, trade unions or trade associations) and at least 3 education and training providers (VET and HEIs), as full partners.
• There should be at least one Higher Education institution and one VET provider involved as full partner in each proposal.

Overview of award criteria

Project proposals will be assessed taking into account the following four criteria, for a maximum score of 100 points:

• Relevance of the project (25 points)
• Quality of the project design and implementation (30 points)
• Quality of the partnership and the cooperation arrangements (25 points)
• Impact (20 points)

Only 1 proposal per ecosystem can be funded. To be considered for funding, proposals must score at least 70 points.

Procedures

Application procedures

Applicants must fill in the standard application template for Erasmus+ projects available here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/erasmus/temp-form/af/af_erasmus-bb-lsii_en.pdf

Application support available

For more information on the call and the application procedure please consult the Erasmus+ Programme Guide at https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/erasmus-programme-guide

For help related to this call, please contact: EACEA-EPLUS-ALLIANCES@ec.europa.eu

Link to funding opportunity

Link to the programme for more info