From classroom experience to European cooperation: the EUCLASS Alliance Summer School 2026
This event is part of the European Skills & VET Week 2026, an initiative of the European Commission organised by Cedefop.
What happens after teachers have taken new educational materials into their classrooms, tested them with students and discovered what truly works?
From 6th to 8th October 2026, 27 vocational education and training professionals from Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain will meet in Athens for the second EUCLASS Alliance Summer School.
The event will mark an important step in the project’s journey. After the first Summer School in 2025, participating teachers returned to their schools and began piloting EUCLASS activities with their students. Over the following academic year, EU citizenship entered VET classrooms through debates, simulations, creative workshops and collaborative learning experiences.
The 2026 Summer School will build directly on those experiences. Rather than starting again from theory, participants will bring back what they have learned from practice: successful activities, unexpected student reactions, challenges encountered and ideas for improvement.
Over three days, the Summer School will create a shared space for reflection, peer learning and transnational cooperation. Teachers will compare experiences across countries, review the educational resources developed by the project and work together to shape the next phase of EUCLASS.
Vocational education powers our future
Reflecting on the first year in the classroom
The first day will focus on the pilot experiences carried out in partner schools.
Participants will be invited to tell the story of their EUCLASS classrooms through student feedback, photographs, teaching materials and concrete examples. These stories will help the group explore what encouraged student participation, which EU-related topics generated the strongest reactions and which activities proved more difficult to implement.
The aim is not only to present successful results. Challenges, adaptations and activities that did not go as planned can also provide valuable lessons. By comparing experiences from different vocational pathways and national contexts, the participants will identify common needs and practical ways to make EU citizenship education more engaging and accessible to VET learners.
Learning from other European experiences
On the second day, the Summer School will look beyond the EUCLASS partnership.
External experts and other European initiatives will introduce practices and resources related to EU citizenship education, democratic participation, non-formal learning and youth engagement. The sessions will explore themes including democracy, migration, defence, active citizenship and the functioning of the European Union, with a particular focus on practical approaches that can motivate both teachers and students.
Participants will examine how other projects and educational programmes have made European topics meaningful to young people. They will consider which methods could be transferred to vocational education and how these approaches might complement the work already carried out within EUCLASS.
This wider perspective will lead into a collaborative review of the project’s educational materials. Drawing on feedback collected from teachers and students during the pilot year, participants will work together to refine lesson plans, activities and resources. The goal will be to make them easier to adapt to different countries, vocational sectors and classroom contexts, while strengthening their connection with existing curricula.
Planning the next academic year together
The final day will turn reflection into action.
Each teacher or school team will develop a concrete plan for the following academic year, deciding which activities to repeat, adapt, expand or redesign.
By the end of the week, each participant will leave Athens with an individual implementation roadmap and a shared framework for collaboration with the other partner schools.
The purpose is clear: to ensure that Europe is not experienced in VET classrooms as a distant or purely institutional topic, but as something students can discuss, question, create and experience together.
The European Skills & VET Week is here to put skills and vocational education and training at the centre of the conversation about Europe’s future.
This initiative on skills and VET, organised by Cedefop and led by the European Commission, connects social partners, VET providers and public authorities to share insights, showcase best practices and drive strategies for upskilling and reskilling across Europe.
See how to get involved: ec.europa.eu/skills-week