The issue

Mobility of school students and their families is hindered in practice by a poorly enabling legal framework. The school period spent abroad is not recognised in many Member States, especially if this does not result in a school diploma corresponding to an EQF level. As a result, the large majority of pupils who go to study in another EU country (with our without their parents) need to attend one or more additional years of school, once back in their home country.

Numbers

About 200.000 school-age individuals are mobile within the EU because of family relocation (according to official statistics).

In addition to this, about 70.000 EU pupils aged 15-18 years old are going on individual long-term exchange every year all over the world, and this number increases by +2.9% every year.  

Recognition is recommended for long-term secondary school individual pupil mobility happening in the framework of the Erasmus+ Programme, but this kind of mobility represents only a very small portion (about 800 pupils in total between 2014 and 2017).

The campaign

The objective of the campaign #RecogniseStudyAbroad is to raise awareness among policy-makers and educational stakeholders about the lack of recognition of long-term pupil exchanges and create a change.

This campaign is led by European Educational Exchanges- Youth For Understanding (EEE-YFU) and the European Federation for Intercultural Learning (EFIL). 

In the period 2016-2019 the campaign has been led in partnership with the European Parliament Youth Intergroup 2014-2019 and supported by the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU), the European Parents Association (EPA), the European Association of History Educators (EUROCLIO), the Key Competence Network on School Eduation (KeyCoNet).

What we do:

  • Unify voices among different educational stakeholders/ partners.
  • Reach out to policy makers, to raise awareness and provide policy options/ solutions.
  • Disseminate an endorsement letter to students and families, to ask for recognition in school after the study abroad period.
  • Collect testimonies of students, parents, and teachers.
  • Raise the issue and show testimonies in different events at the European level.
  • Work alongside decision-makers to create an enabling policy environment.

Contact us!

For information regarding the campaign you can contact: info@recognisestudyabroad.eu. You can also call EEE-YFU office +32 (0)2 648 47 90  and EFIL office +32 (0)2 514 52 50, during office hours.