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Regio Partnerships

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Comenius Regio Partnerships

Comenius Regio, a great opportunity for local authority linking within Europe

Link up with another European region with the aim of improving your educational offer to young people
Motivate local authority staff and teachers by exchanging best practice and promoting cooperation
Include schools and other players linked to education (eg teacher training, youth groups, vocational educators, community organisations and employers)
Funding of up to €45,000 available per region for meetings, work shadowing and other activities over a two-year partnership

Regio Partnerships will promote joint cooperation activities between local and regional education authorities. The partnerships will give educational authorities, in cooperation with schools and other actors in education, the opportunity to work together on topics of mutual interest. They will help the participating regions to develop and exchange best practice, to develop sustainable cooperation across borders, to strengthen the European dimension in school education and to offer European learning experiences to teachers and pupils and administrators.

They consist of 2 partner regions, each of which must involve:

• a local or regional authority with a role in school education
• at least one school
• at least one other relevant local partner (eg youth or sports clubs, parents’ and pupils’ associations, local teacher training institutes, other learning providers, further education institutions and local employers, community organisations, museums and advisory services).

To start with, Comenius Regio Partnerships may include partner regions from only two countries participating in the Lifelong Learning Programme.

Regio Partnerships will focus their work on clearly defined themes. These might concern for example the organisation of school education, cooperation between schools and other local partners (e.g. providers of formal or non-formal learning), or common problems in school education (eg new approaches in the organisation of schooling, disadvantaged pupils and early school leaving, teacher qualifications and competence).

They should help regions to improve their educational offer to young people. The main purpose of  Regio is not to involve pupils or students directly but to promote the development of structured cooperation between the partner regions.

Examples of the range of activities that can be carried out in Regio Partnerships include:

Project meetings between all institutions involved in the partnership
Exchanges of staff involved in school education (e.g. teacher exchanges, study visits of staff working in the local/regional school administration)
Action research, small studies
Job shadowing
Exchanges of experience and good practice with partner regions / municipalities abroad
Peer learning activities and common training sessions
Conferences, seminars and workshops
Summer schools
Awareness raising campaigns
Drafting, publishing and disseminating documentation related to the co-operation activities
Linguistic preparation of staff participating in the partnership
Co-operation with other projects in related subject areas (including Comenius Networks), including mobility to network events if relevant, sharing experience with other institutions in the region
Joint self-evaluation activities
Dissemination of project experiences and outcomes

Regio Partnerships can be combined with already existing activities in Town Twinning or other European educational programmes, but should clearly create additional cooperation activities as well as a deepening of already existing cooperation in the field of school education.

Who can take part?
Local and regional school education authorities, schools, pupils, teachers, parents and other relevant associations and stakeholders in school education / youth work in their respective region / municipality. The list of eligible local authorities is here

For information about application deadlines and procedures visit the How to Apply page.

Read some of the frequently asked questions relating to Comenius Regio Partnerships.

For further information contact comenius@britishcouncil.org