Socrates: maintaining the momentum

The potential advantage of joint educational projects is locally being explored far and wide. Since Malta started participating in the Socrates programme, this year has seen the highest level of participation.

Educational organisation, institutions, unions and private companies in Malta participated prominently in the latest call for Socrates projects of November 1. The University of Malta holds top place in the level of participation, with project submissions from various faculties and departments.

The call cuts across a wide learning spectrum for Grundtvig, Minerva and Lingua projects. These odd but certainly not unfamiliar names are none but action areas within the Socrates programme.

Nikoli Frederik Severin Grundtvig, a Danish clergyman regarded as the father of adult education, lent his name to the European Union's Adult Education and Lifelong Learning area within Socrates, while the Greek goddess of Wisdom, Minerva, gave her name to the area dedicated to Information and Communications Technology in Education. Lingua brings nothing to mind other than Languages, teaching and learning. These areas are technically different from the Comenius and Erasmus actions, especially in terms of much higher funding levels.

Maltese participation for this year exceeded a staggering 70 projects across the three areas. The most popular action appears to be Grundtvig, the adult education area, where participants proposed projects for the creation of formal and informal learning opportunities for adults and disadvantaged groups.

Lingua projects this year focused generally on the future needs and challenges, which the Maltese language will deal with upon Malta's full accession to the EU.

Minerva projects featured ideas for innovative educational software, distance learning courses, online learning environments and virtual learning tools. These being centralised projects, which are submitted directly to the European Commission, have no ceiling for funding, with each project requesting grants in the region of €250,000. Each project is proposed in a partnership with European countries to reflect shared benefits and responsibilities.

The Malta Socrates National Agency at the University of Malta is responsible for the co-ordination, dissemination of information as well as one of three evaluation opinions which each project will receive for the final result.

To ensure that the momentum created by Malta's participation in the Socrates programme is maintained at all levels, the Socrates Office offers free support and consultation for the preparation of these projects from the initial partner finding to a step-by-step proposal write-up. To convince the European Commission to part with a significant sum of its money is certainly no easy feat but Malta can say that it has been there and done it!

Ms Dalmas is from the Malta Socrates National Agency at the University of Malta

http://socrates.um.edu.mt/