Accreditation or short-term project: which KA1 route fits your school

There are two doors into KA1 funding, and organisations regularly pick the wrong one — usually the ambitious one, in a year when nobody has time for it.

The short-term project (KA122)

One project, a defined set of mobilities, six to eighteen months, no accreditation needed. You write the application, you either get it or you do not, and the commitment ends with the project.

Choose it if: this is your first mobility project; you have one or two clear objectives rather than a strategy; the staff who will drive it are already identified and available; you want to find out whether your organisation actually enjoys this before committing to it long term.

Accreditation (KA120)

You write an Erasmus Plan once — objectives, target groups, planned activities, quality standards — and if accredited you receive simplified annual access to funding for the rest of the programme period.

Choose it if: you intend to send staff abroad every year; you can name the objectives that will still matter in three years; you have someone whose job description can realistically include coordinating this; your leadership is stable enough to sign up for a multi-year commitment.

The honest comparison

	KA122	KA120 accreditation
Effort at application	Moderate, project-specific	High, strategic
Effort in later years	Same again, every time	Low — an annual request
Planning horizon	One project	The programme period
Risk	Rejected project, one lost year	Rejected accreditation, and the accreditation round comes once a year
Best for	First-timers, single objectives	Organisations making mobility routine

A third option people forget

If your organisation is small, or the coordination capacity simply is not there, you can join a mobility consortium led by an accredited coordinator — often a municipality, a regional authority or a larger school network. You send staff; someone else carries the administration. It is frequently the right answer for small schools, and it is almost never the first one suggested.

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If you are not sure which door you are standing in front of, describe your situation to us. We will say which route we would choose and why, even when the answer is "not this year".

• KA1
• accreditation
• KA122

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