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Topic 6: Digital education: Assessment of digital skills and competences
Funding Program
Erasmus+ - Key Action 2 – Cooperation among Organisations and Institutions
Call number
ERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARD-DIGITAL-SC
deadlines
Opening
18.12.2024
Deadline
27.05.2025 17:00
Funding rate
80%
Estimated EU contribution per project
max. € 1,000,000.00
Link to the call
Link to the submission
Call content
short description
This action will aim to foster innovation, creativity and participation, as well as social entrepreneurship, in different fields of education and training, within sectors or across sectors and disciplines. Projects under this Topic will focus on the assessment of individual students’ digital skills at primary and/or secondary level including VET, the end of the secondary education cycle, and explore the feasibility of assessment practices that are explicit about the level of digital skills, including by referencing it clearly to DigComp, in a variety of contexts (e.g. if digital skills are developed through a specific subject or in a transversal way).
Call objectives
This action will aim to foster innovation, creativity and participation, as well as social entrepreneurship, in different fields of education and training, within sectors or across sectors and disciplines.
Forward-Looking Projects are large-scale projects that aim to identify, develop, test and/or assess innovative (policy) approaches that have the potential of becoming mainstreamed, thus improving education and training systems. They will support forward-looking ideas responding to key European priorities. They should give input for improving education and training systems, as well as bring a substantial innovative effect in terms of methods and practices to all types of learning and active participation settings for Europe's social cohesion.
The goal is to support transnational cooperation projects implementing a coherent and comprehensive set of sectoral or cross-sectoral activities that either: a) foster innovation in terms of scope, ground-breaking methods and practices, and/or b) ensure a transfer of innovation (across countries, policy sectors or target groups), thus ensuring at European level a sustainable exploitation of innovative project results and/or transferability into different contexts and audiences. The partnerships should be composed of a mix of public and private organisations combining researchers, practitioners and partners with the capacity to reach policy makers.
Forward-Looking Projects should therefore be implemented by a mixed partnership of organisations:
- based on excellence and state of the art knowledge;
- having the capacity to innovate;
- able to generate systemic impact through their activities and the potential to drive the policy agenda in the fields of education and training.
The general objectives are as follows:
- Implementing innovative initiatives with a strong impact on education and training reforms in specific strategic policy areas;
- Contributing to the strengthening of Europe's innovation capacity by promoting innovation in education and training;
- Creating systemic change through fostering innovation at both practice and policy level;
- Support forward-looking ideas focusing on key topics and priorities at EU level, with a clear potential to be mainstreamed in one or more sectors;
- As fully innovative, ground-breaking educational methods and practices and/or transfer of innovation: ensuring at EU level a sustainable exploitation of innovative project results and/or transferability into different contexts and audiences.
The specific objectives include:
- Identifying, developing, testing and/or assessing innovative approaches that have the potential to be mainstreamed in order to improve education and training systems, as well as the effectiveness of policies and practices in the field of education and training;
- Launching pilot actions to test solutions and address future challenges, aiming to create sustainable and systemic impact;
- Supporting transnational cooperation and mutual learning on forward-looking issues amongst key stakeholders and empowering them to develop innovative solutions and promote the transfer of those solutions in new settings, including capacity building of relevant stakeholders.
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Expected effects and impacts
- A framework for assessing individual student skills attainment levels;
- A repository of items (i.e. questions or question areas) to assess digital skills;
- A methodology for the usability of the assessment framework in a diversity of contexts (e.g. regardless of when/how digital skills are developed) and levels and sectors of education (primary, secondary, VET). The projects under this Topic will also consider how/if the outputs are transferable to other sectors of education and training.
Expected results
In today's technology-driven world, digital skills have become a basic skill, on a par with literacy, numeracy, and science. At a societal level, a digitally skilled population can impact economic growth, technological advancement, sustainability development, social engagement that leads to enhancing living standards. In education and training, embedding digital skills in the curriculum from an early age prepares students not just for the jobs of the future, but also for real life problems and challenges.
While all EU countries include digital skills development in education and training, only half of them have developed assessment procedures for digital skills at primary or secondary school level, with some countries not testing digital skills at all. Despite the cross-curricular nature of digital skills, testing is not homogeneous, and tends to preferentially involve students in certain disciplines, such as STEM.
Projects under this Topic will focus on the assessment of individual students’ digital skills at primary and/or secondary level including VET, the end of the secondary education cycle, and explore the feasibility of assessment practices that are explicit about the level of digital skills, including by referencing it clearly to DigComp, in a variety of contexts (e.g. if digital skills are developed through a specific subject or in a transversal way). These projects will allow to identify factors and criteria which are necessary for developing a comprehensive and robust assessment methodology for digital skills, thus supporting the creation of a progression model to assess digital skills.
Specific activities that can be funded (scope)
- Methodologically robust research and analysis leading to an assessment framework for digital skills;
- Development of questionnaires or structured assessment methods for evaluating digital skills;
- Implementation of assessment methods for digital skills and analysis of the results;
- Design and pilot of assessment frameworks for digital skills which are also referenced to the latest version of DigComp;
- Transfer of innovative methods or tools (across countries, policy sectors or target groups) for the assessment of digital skills;
- A Mapping of assessment methods and policies in a variety of contexts and in different MS;
- A reassessment of monitoring systems: mappings of, or proposal for innovative monitoring and evaluation frameworks and methodologies to gauge and evaluate the effectiveness of the assessment methodologies;
- Analysis of transferability of the project results and sustainability of its results after the end of the project (including in other sectors of education and training); •
- Dissemination and networking events (sectoral or cross sectoral) aiming for further exposure of the project work and results and for increasing possibility for transferability.
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Eligibility Criteria
Regions / countries for funding
Albania (Shqipëria), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina / Босна и Херцеговина), Faeroes (Føroyar / Færøerne), Iceland (Ísland), Kosovo (Kosova/Kosovë / Косово), Liechtenstein, Montenegro (Црна Гора), North Macedonia (Северна Македонија), Norway (Norge), Serbia (Srbija/Сpбија), Switzerland (Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera), Türkiye
eligible entities
Education and training institution, Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Other, Private institution, incl. private company (private for profit), Public Body (national, regional and local; incl. EGTCs), Research Institution incl. University, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)
Mandatory partnership
Yes
Project Partnership
Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of at least 3 applicants (beneficiaries, not affiliated entities), from a minimum of 3 EU Member States or third countries associated to the Programme.
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies) active in the fields of education and training, research and innovation or in the world of work. For Topic 4 ‘Adult Learning: Support to the Pact for Skills’, these bodies should also be registered members of the Pact for skills;
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e. Erasmus+ Programme Countries:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
- non-EU countries: listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Erasmus+ Programme (list of participating countries)
- for higher education institutions (HEIs) established in Erasmus+ Programme Countries (see above): be holders of the ECHE certificate (Erasmus Charter for Higher Education).
Organisations from third countries not associated to the Programme can only be involved as associated partners (not as beneficiaries and affiliated entities). Exception: organisations from Belarus and the Russian Federation are not eligible to participate in this action.
other eligibility criteria
Specific cases:
Natural persons — Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of self employed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).
International organisations — International organisations are NOT eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.
Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.
EU bodies — EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.
Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’. Please note that if the action will be implemented by the members, they should also participate (either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities, otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible).
Countries currently negotiating association agreements — Beneficiaries from countries with ongoing negotiations for participation in the programme (see list of participating countries above) may participate in the call and can sign grants if the negotiations are concluded before grant signature and if the association covers the call (i.e. is retroactive and covers both the part of the programme and the year when the call was launched).
Financial support to third parties is not allowed.
Topic 6,7 and 8 share a total budget of € 13,000,000.00.
Additional information
Topics
Relevance for EU Macro-Region
EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region, EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region
UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)
project duration
between 24 and 36 months
Additional Information
Proposals must be submitted before the call deadline (see timetable section 4).
Proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal Electronic Submission System (accessible via the Topic page in the Calls for proposals section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.
Proposals (including annexes and supporting documents) must be submitted using the forms provided inside the Submission System ( NOT the documents available on the Topic page — they are only for information).
Proposals must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:
- Application Form Part A — contains administrative information about the participants (future coordinator, beneficiaries and affiliated entities) and the summarised budget for the project (to be filled in directly online)
- Application Form Part B — contains the technical description of the project (template to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed, assembled and re-uploaded)
- Part C — contains the project’s contribution to EU programme key performance indicators (to be filled in directly online)
- Mandatory annexes and supporting documents (templates to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed, assembled and re uploaded):
- Detailed budget table/calculator
Please be aware that since the detailed budget table serves as the basis for fixing the lump sums for the grants (and since lump sums must be reliable proxies for the actual costs of a project), the costs you include MUST comply with the basic eligibility conditions for EU actual cost grants (see AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement, art 6). This is particularly important for purchases and subcontracting, which must comply with best value for money (or if appropriate the lowest price) and be free of any conflict of interests. If the budget table contains ineligible costs, the grant may be reduced (even later on during the project implementation or after their end).
Proposals are limited to maximum 70 pages (Part B).
Call documents
ERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARDERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARD(1214kB)
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