Alliances for Innovation aim to strengthen Europe’s innovation capacity by boosting innovation through cooperation and flow of knowledge among higher education, vocational education and training (both initial and continuous), and the broader socio economic environment, including research.
They also aim to boost the provision of new skills and address skills mismatches by designing and creating new curricula for higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET), supporting the development of a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets in the EU.
OBJECTIVES OF THE ACTION
These partnerships shall implement a coherent and comprehensive set of sectoral or cross-sectoral activities, which should be adaptable to future knowledge developments across the EU.
To boost innovation, the focus will be on digital skills as they are increasingly important in all job profiles across the entire labour market. Also, the transition to a circular and greener economy needs to be underpinned by changes to qualifications and national education and training curricula to meet emerging professional needs for green skills and sustainable development.
Alliances for Education and Enterprises are transnational, structured and result-driven projects, in which partners share common goals and work together to foster innovation, new skills, a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets.
They aim to foster innovation in higher education, vocational education and training, enterprises and the broader socioeconomic environment. This includes confronting societal and economic challenges such as climate change, changing demographics, digitalisation, artificial intelligence and rapid employment changes through social innovation and community resilience, as well as labour market innovation.
Alliances for Education and Enterprises bring together enterprises and both higher education and vocational training providers to work together in partnership. Operating within one economic sector or several different economic sectors, they create reliable and sustainable relations and demonstrate their innovative and transnational character in all aspects. While each partnership must include at least one VET and one higher education organisation, they can address either both or one of these educational fields.
They intend to achieve one or more of the following aims:
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
In order to be eligible for an Erasmus+ grant, project proposals for Lot 1 - Alliances for Education and Enterprises must comply with the following criteria:
Who can apply?
Any full partner legally established in a Programme Country can be the applicant. This organisation applies on behalf of all participating organisations involved in the project.
What types of organisations are eligible to participate in the project?
The following organisations can be involved as full partner, affiliated entity or associated partner under Lot 1 - Alliances for Education and Enterprises. They can be public or private organisations legally established in a Programme Country or in any Partner Country (see section "Eligible Countries" in Part A of the Programme Guide).
Higher education institutions established in a Programme Country must hold a valid Erasmus Charter for Higher Education (ECHE). An ECHE is not required for participating HEIs in partner countries.
Number and profile of participating organisations
Alliances for Education and Enterprises must cover at least 4 Programme countries, involving a minimum of 8 full partners. The partnership must include at least 3 labour market actors (enterprises or companies, or representative intermediary organisations, such as chambers, trade unions or trade associations) and at least 3 education and training providers (VET and/or HEIs), as full partners. There should be at least one HE institution and one VET provider involved as full partner in each proposal.
Duration of project
2 or 3 years. The duration has to be chosen at application stage, based on the objective of the project and on the type of activities planned over time.
Where to apply?
To the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA).
Call ID lot1: ERASMUS-EDU-2021-PI-ALL-INNO-EDU-ENTERP
When to apply?
Applicants have to submit their grant application by 7 September 2021 at 17:00:00 (Brussels time).
Applicant organisations will be assessed against the relevant exclusion and selection criteria. For more information please consult Part C of the Programme Guide.
SETTING UP A PROJECT
Each Alliance shall implement a coherent, comprehensive and variable set of interconnected activities to enhance innovation in higher education, vocational education and training and enterprises (including large, small and medium sized enterprises and social enterprises) and the broader socio economic environment.
Activities supported include:
Boosting innovation
Developing a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets, competences and skills
Stimulating the flow and exchange of knowledge between higher education, VET, enterprises and research
Identifying resilience-related, market needs and emerging professions
Alliances for Innovation are required to apply EU wide instruments and tools, such as the EQF, ESCO, Europass, EQAVET and ESG, whenever relevant.
To try and test new curricula or new training and learning methods, Alliances for Innovation may organise learning mobility activities of students, teachers, researchers and staff in so far as they support/complement the main activities of the partnerships and bring added value in the implementation of the project's objectives.
EXPECTED IMPACT
Alliances for Innovation will be anchored in strategic and sustainable cooperation among vocational education and training, higher education and enterprises working together to boost the innovation capacity of Europe. They will considerably strengthen the synergies between both educational fields in fostering innovation, new skills, a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets. These Alliances among HE, VET and the enterprises are expected to contribute to the development of regional eco-systems and directly provide a valuable input to the economy, integrating workbased learning. While universities have research knowledge and data that allows them to directly provide input to small and medium sized enterprises to boost local economies, VET providers supply skills needed by enterprises and they are able to foster growth in the local economy.
At a larger scale, Alliances for Innovation are expected to target societal and economic challenges, both in education and employment, and take into account key areas such as innovation challenges, skills provision, climate change, green economy, demography, digitalisation and artificial intelligence. Benefits can also be drawn from cooperation with large enterprises. The Alliances for Innovation will focus on the need of citizens and accelerate the modernization of HE and VET.
The Pact for Skills will not only establish a framework for the implementation of the other actions of the updated Skills Agenda, but also for the dissemination and exploitation of the project results of the Alliances for Innovation. In particular the results of the Blueprint Alliances for sectoral cooperation on skills will be used as a basis for the Pact for Skills sectoral large-scale partnerships.
In addition, the Alliances will help to implement the EU Communication on the Renewed Agenda for Higher Education (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52017DC0247) and contribute to the creation of a European Education Area (https://ec.europa.eu/education/education-in-the-eu/european-education-area_en). They will also contribute to implement the EU Industrial and SMEs strategies (2021).
The Alliances for Innovation will also take into account the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/) and the Paris Declaration on Climate Change (https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement) as overarching parameters of the action, thus helping the European Commission to implement its new Green Deal (https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/european-green-deal-communication_en.pdf) and the Europe Recovery Plan (https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/recovery-plan-europe_en).
Alliances for Innovation are meant to have a short and long term impact on the wider range of stakeholders involved, at individual, organisational and systemic level. This impact is expected to go beyond the project's lifetime and beyond the organisations involved in the partnerships. It is expected that partnership and activities persist. For that, results/deliverables might not be stand-alone but be linked to/integrated into existing undertakings, schemes, projects, platforms, ventures etc.
AWARD CRITERIA
The following award criteria apply for Lot 1 - Alliances for Education and Enterprises:
Relevance of the project
(maximum score 25 points)
Quality of the project design and implementation
(maximum score 30 points)
Quality of the partnership and the cooperation arrangements
(maximum score 25 points)
Impact
(maximum score 20 points)
To be considered for funding, proposals must score at least 70 points taking into account the necessary minimum pass score for each of the four award criteria: minimum 13 points for the “relevance of the project” category; 16 points for “quality of the project design and implementation”, 13 points for “quality of the partnership and the cooperation arrangements” and 11 points for “impact”.
The ex aequo proposals within the same topic will be prioritised according to the scores they have been awarded for the award criterion “relevance” and then “impact”.
WHAT ARE THE FUNDING RULES?
This action follows a lump sum funding model. The amount of the single lump sum contribution will be determined for each grant based on the estimated budget of the action proposed by the applicant. The granting authority will fix the lump sum of each grant based on the proposal, evaluation result, funding rates and the maximum grant amount set in the call.
The maximum EU grant per project is as follows:
Lot 1- Alliances for Education and Enterprises
How is the project lump sum determined?
Applicants must fill in a detailed budget table according to the application form, taking into account the following points:
a) The budget should be detailed as necessary by beneficiary/-ies and organized in coherent work packages (for example divided into ‘project management’, ‘training’, ‘organization of events’, ‘mobility preparation and implementation’, ‘communication and dissemination’, ‘quality assurance’, etc.);
b) The proposal must describe the activities covered by each work package;
c) Applicants must provide in their proposal a breakdown of the estimated costs showing the share per work package (and, within each work package, the share assigned to each beneficiary and affiliated entity);
d) Costs described can cover staff costs, travel and subsistence costs, equipment costs and subcontracting as well as other costs (such us dissemination of information, publishing or translation).
Proposals will be evaluated according to the standard evaluation procedures with the help of internal and/or external experts. The experts will assess the quality of the proposals against the requirements defined in the call and the expected impact, quality and efficiency of the action. The lump sum value will be limited to a maximum of 80% of the estimated budget determined after evaluation.
Following the proposal evaluation, the authorising officer will establish the amount of the lump sum, taking into account the findings of the assessment carried out.
The grant parameters (maximum grant amount, funding rate, total eligible costs, etc.) will be fixed in the Grant Agreement.
The project achievements will be evaluated on the outcomes completed. The funding scheme would allow putting focus on the outputs rather than the inputs, thereby placing emphasis on the quality and level of achievement of measurable objectives.
More details are described in the model Grant Agreement available in the Funding and Tender Opportunities Portal (FTOP).
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