On 28 June 2019, the fourth ‘Call for Proposals’ of the Comenius programme has opened. The Comenius programme was set up by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to enable teachers (Fellows, Senior Fellows, Leadership Fellows) to realise their ambitions and plans for educational innovation and improvement. The Comenius programme will grow into a programme with a substantial budget in 2018 (6 million in 2018, 12.6 million in 2021), which will be made available for dozens of projects lasting one, two or three years.

The deadlines for submitting a proposal are set out in the table below. Contrary to last year, an extra round has been inserted by means of a pre-registration. The aim of this is that a preliminary recommendation will be given by the selection committee as soon as possible after the pre-registration in order to assess the potential of the proposal. In case of a low probability, it is not recommended to develop the proposal further into a complete proposal. This extra round has been included to limit the work of both the applicant and the selection committee.

Grants	Goal of innovation	Amount	Deadline declaration of intent NRO	Deadline pre-registration	Deadline full application NRO
Teaching Fellows	within a course or component of a course	50.000 euro	10 September 2019, 14:00h	8 October 2019, 14:00h	9 January 2020, 14:00h
Senior Fellows	Within a phase/ education/ learning program	100.000 euro	Per faculty an internal deadline for pre-registration   3 September 2019, 14:00h	1 October 2019, 14:00h	3 December 2019, 14:00h
Leadership Fellows	Within a whole institution	500.000 euro 	Pre-registration internal at the VU 22 August 2019 5 September 2019, 14:00h	n/a	10 October 2019, 14:00h

Themes 2020
Teaching Fellows and Senior Fellows submit an application within one of the following themes:

• Theme 1: Inclusive education.
• Theme 2: Bildung / Identity building.
• Theme 3: Connecting with society.
• Theme 4: Free theme – the full breadth of ‘The value(s) of knowing’.

Procedure at the VU

Procedure at the VU

Ask your own faculty what the procedures are for applying for a Senior Fellow and inform the faculty board if you consider applying for a Teaching Fellow.
As only one Leadership proposal will be submitted per institution, an internal nomination round will be organised within the VU, equal to 2018, in order to determine which proposal will be the most successful to submit. The preliminary proposal (max. 2 A4) must be submitted before 22 August 2019. Send this proposal to Silvester Draaijer via s.draaijer@vu.nl. The Ad Hoc jury committee will evaluate these preliminary proposals and indicate which proposal from the VU will be submitted to NRO. The VU will therefore support the further preparation of the final proposal.

Try to give in the preliminary proposal an indication of the four main criteria for the application so that the Ad Hoc Jury Committee can form a well-founded opinion:

• the innovative character;
• the expected yield;
• the quality of the project plan (even less important for a declaration of intent);
• the applicant’s educational experience and vision

More detailed information about the regulation can be found on the NRO website.

More information is available via Silvester Draaijer (SOZ), s.draaijer@vu.nl. He is available for advice and can provide support to make the proposal as successful as possible.