On 15 January 2020, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the Commons: “There is no threat to the Erasmus scheme. We will continue to participate.”
However, 11 months later, despite Johnson’s promise, Britain left the hugely successful Erasmus+ programme, which had transformed the lives of thousands of young people. This loss of youth mobility and educational exchange was a huge and unnecessary mistake.
Its replacement, the Turing scheme, is less inclusive and far narrower in scope: there is no funding for overseas students to come to the UK, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds receive less funding than under Erasmus+.
The EU has recently offered the UK the opportunity to take part in a European youth mobility scheme, as a “token of good faith” that Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to build better relationships with Europe. This would enable young people from Britain to live and work in the EU for a fixed period, and vice versa. But so far, frustratingly, Starmer has resisted the proposals.
From Erasmus to Erasmus+
The Erasmus programme was set up in 1987 as an exchange programme for higher education students. It enabled students to study in Europe and experience life in one of 33 participating countries. Around 90% of European universities were – and are – involved.
My own experience in organising this programme with a hogeschool in the Netherlands in the 1990s was very positive. Students benefited enormously from the cultural and social features of the exchange, as well as the educational aspects.
A justifiable criticism of Erasmus was that it was restricted to university students and many people mistakenly still think that this is the case. However, in 2014, the programme was expanded into Erasmus+ to be more inclusive and wide-ranging.
Erasmus+ enables organisations in education, training, youth and sport the opportunity to take part in cooperation projects and form partnerships, helping to foster “social integration, enhancing intercultural understanding and developing a sense of belonging to a community”. For example, in its second year, around €28 million were invested to help equip and train 38,000 youth workers across Europe, including the UK. In 2018 I was involved in a successful Erasmus+ programme, coordinated by UK Language Courses (UKLC), where a group of English teachers spent a month teaching in schools in A Coruña, Spain.
A key objective of Erasmus+ is social inclusion. A much wider group of young people is now involved, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, including newly arrived migrants and those with disabilities or health-related conditions. Vocational training and youth exchanges outside formal education are central to the programme.
Loss of valuable Erasmus+ projects in the UK
Teachers, youth workers and other organisers who were involved with Erasmus+ cooperation projects shared their positive experiences of the programme in a recent, well-attended webinar organised by InterCom, a network for international education.
Former Labour MEP Julie Ward, who helped to write the original programme, described the benefits to children with learning disabilities who participated in several Erasmus+ exchanges abroad, coordinated by Headway Arts in Blyth, Northumberland. These young people gained a sense of dignity and self-worth, Ward explained, but the programmes have been taken away and not replaced.
Anna Grainger, a language teacher from Coventry, described the crisis in language teaching and the loss of opportunities for children to develop their language learning through exchange programmes since Erasmus+ was discontinued. She asked: “Who is going to employ our young people in comparison with multilingual European young people?”
Ray Kirtley, chair of the UK Global Learning Association for Schools, coordinated Erasmus+ projects in Hull. He talked positively about eTwinning, which had involved disadvantaged children as young as 4-5 years old in online discussions with schools in Europe, and also about the lost opportunities for teachers to experience in-service language training in Europe.
What alternatives are available?
Although many of the webinar contributors were endeavouring to keep EU cooperative projects going, this was generally impossible without funding. For example, Terry Mattison, a youth worker from the north-west of England, had made direct contact with a school in Germany which had many Syrian refugees as students, but possible visits there were impossible because of costs.
In Wales, Taith, an international learning exchange programme, has enabled over 100 young people to take part in international partnerships. Tom Weiser, from the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, said Taith was not a perfect replacement for Erasmus+, but positive learning was certainly taking place.
InterCom webinar participants were highly critical of the Turing programme, which they regarded as inferior in terms of diversity of activity, lack of actual exchanges, less funding and difficulties in administration. However, Simon Litchfield from Durham University said that some universities would be reluctant to go back to Erasmus+, as they have embedded Turing in various degree programmes.
Erasmus+ campaigns are hopeful
Encouragingly, there are growing campaigns to bring back Erasmus+. Embrace Erasmus, led by the Young European Movement in partnership with the British Youth Council and European Movement (EM), is calling on the government to restore Britain’s membership in the programme.
Campaign manager Richard Kilpatrick told the webinar audience that the EM will not only emphasise the benefits to universities but will highlight “the diversity of the youth work, the retraining opportunities, the specific diversity work”. Rather than looking back on what Erasmus used to be like, the EM will focus on what the UK is missing out on in the current Erasmus+ programmes.
The Erasmus Plus Alliance (EPA), whose volunteer team includes teachers, students and youth workers, is also campaigning to bring back the programme because it gives “unprecedented funding to the least privileged”. The group points out that other non-EU countries, such as Norway and Türkiye, are full participants, so the UK could have kept its membership and should rejoin as soon as possible.
Britain’s young people are missing out on the incredible opportunities for intercultural exchange and learning that Erasmus+ can provide. Let’s hope that Starmer’s government listens to the arguments for restoring this unique initiative, that will encourage sorely needed “mutual understanding, tolerance, and cooperation” with our European neighbours.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
