Did you know that every year more than 60 000 pupils in Europe go abroad on long-term individual pupil mobility in secondary schools through different programmes offered by public, non-profit or for-profit providers? Through these learning mobilities pupils are able to learn another language, experience another culture, develop key competences such as critical thinking and intercultural skills, and explore active citizenship through living in the local community and attending school abroad. However, few pupils get the learning outcomes of their period abroad recognised or even assessed at all when they return to their school back home!
Individual Pupil Mobility can be not only a life changing personal experience for the pupil, but also a key tool to internationalise the whole school. How does IPM benefit the whole school? Pupils gain personal growth, oftentimes having a life-changing experience, knowledge of other cultures and a greater sense of global active citizenship.
Educators gain professional development, new pedagogical practices and tools, as well as the opportunity to cooperate with teachers from other countries.
Schools have the chance for cross-border cooperation, learning innovative practices, further motivating their staff and engaging with the local community.
By assessing what the pupil has achieved during their learning period abroad, the learning outcomes are explicitly defined, can be measured and reviewed. Consequently it improves the learning processes of both the pupil and the institution. Assessing the learning outcomes, with the help of tools such as the Transversal Competencies-based Learning Agreement and the Intercultura Assessment Protocol, is the greatest step towards automatic recognition. When the learning outcomes are explicit and assessed, recognition is feasible. On the other hand, the absence of automatic recognition is an obstacle to further promoting pupil mobility and making it accessible to a broad range of pupils.
If you are interested in learning more about the internationalisation of secondary education through learning mobility, EFIL organises training courses for teachers and school heads to prepare and support schools with Individual Pupil Mobility – through Erasmus+ and other programmes – and in designing learning agreements which foster automatic recognition of pupils’ learning outcomes. Teachers and relevant staff will learn how to capitalise on IPM experiences for internationalisation in a whole school approach and improve their ability to formulate and assess intended learning outcomes in terms of competences, which will support them in finding alignments between curricula. On top of that, teachers will also discover ways to apply non-formal education methods within individual pupil mobility programmes to foster the development of transversal competences, notably intercultural learning.
Find more information and register for the upcoming training in March 2025 in Thessaloniki, Greece using this link!
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