The EU’s Erasmus programme has a misleading image of just being a student exchange scheme and, as such, a bit elitist. But Erasmus is designed to boost education, training and opportunities for all EU citizens – and that will be even more true in the future.
Like many EU ideas, Erasmus is poorly understood in the UK, and may only be fully appreciated by the British public if Brexit means we’re no longer a part of it.
It includes activities for those at school as well as those at university, for work as well as study placements, for teachers as well as students, for organisations as well as individuals. It promotes the modernisation of education and training systems, innovation and exchange of good practice in education policy, as well as good governance in sport across Europe.
Erasmus is set to be expanded massively in the EU’s next spending period, between 2021 and 2027, with its budget doubled to £27 billion. The European Commission expects 12 million school pupils, higher education students, trainees, teachers, trainers, youth workers, sports coaches, learners in vocational education and training as well as adult learning staff in Europe to benefit – that’s three times more than in the previous period.
The next phase of Erasmus also aims to knock its elitist image on the head. The European Commission wants it to reach out to people of all social backgrounds and to help them study for the future – in areas such as renewable energy, climate change, environmental engineering, artificial intelligence and design.
According to the British Council, which jointly runs Erasmus in the UK, 40,000 Brits went abroad to study, train, volunteer or gain professional experience in 2015-16 via an Erasmus-supported scheme, while almost 50,000 Europeans came to the UK.
The UK’s participation in Erasmus as an EU member is due to end with Brexit. But exactly how it will disentangle – and potentially reattach – itself is unclear. Under the failed Withdrawal Agreement, which Theresa May negotiated, the government promised that all Erasmus projects would continue as planned during the transitional period until 2020. Negotiations about whether the UK would participate in the 2021-2027 programme could then have taken place during the transition period.
If the UK leaves without a deal, the government has promised UK participants can complete any Erasmus projects that have already been agreed and to underwrite funding for the lifetime of the projects. But it is unclear whether individuals or organisations will now be able to participate in new Erasmus activities planned for the 2019-2020 academic year.
Even if there is a Brexit deal it remains unclear whether the UK will seek to rejoin Erasmus. Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Turkey, North Macedonia and Serbia all participate fully as “non-EU programme countries”. Other countries are classified as “partner countries” and can participate in Erasmus activities under certain circumstances.
In February the House of Lords’ EU committee concluded the Erasmus programme was “an overwhelming force for good” and the UK should seek full membership of “this important initiative”. If that could not be negotiated, the committee said, it would be essential for the government to establish an alternative UK scheme.
But it would be an enormous challenge to match the enhanced employment opportunities, language skills and boost to quality learning and teaching that Erasmus offers. As the LSE’s Anne Corbett puts it, such an ambitious scheme ”is easy to destruct and very difficult to reconstruct”.