SPARK STEAM and Personal Finance for Real-World Knowledge
Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership · KA220-SCH
Equipping teenagers with financial literacy through STEM/STEAM learning.
SPARK is a two-year European cooperation bringing together schools, educators and innovation partners in the Netherlands, Malta, Italy and Lithuania to design a new generation of open, gamified learning resources — because the decisions young people make today shape the lives they can live tomorrow.
- Duration
- 24 months
- Consortium
- 6 partners
- Countries
- NL · MT · IT · LT
- EU grant
- €250 000
- Project phase
- WP1 · Mgmt
- Month
- 06 / 24
Focus area
STEAM meets personal finance
Interdisciplinary content, built for hybrid classrooms and lifelong curiosity.
About SPARK
Where personal finance meets the STEAM classroom.
Many young Europeans enter adulthood without a grip on personal finance — budgeting, interest, risk, long-term value. At the same time, demand for STEM competencies keeps rising and schools struggle to make either subject feel relevant.
SPARK weaves these two worlds into one interdisciplinary classroom experience, so 13–17 year-olds learn to reason about money with the same clarity they bring to science, technology and the arts. We design the materials together with teachers in four countries, pilot them in real classrooms, and release the full toolkit as open educational resources for any school in the EU to pick up.
What we’re building, in three movements.
01 · Gap analysis
Map what teachers need, what students want, and where the two currently miss each other — across all four countries.
02 · Co-design
With teachers, build a multilingual online course and toolkit — animated videos, gamified modules and a virtual escape room — in EN, NL, IT and LT.
03 · Pilot & scale
Test in real classrooms in four countries, refine, then open-source the full curriculum for any school in the EU to pick up.
Beyond October 2027
Built to last after the funding ends
Every SPARK output is released as an open educational resource under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and deposited on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform — so any school across the EU can keep using, translating and adapting the toolkit long after the project formally closes. Hosting of the materials is sustained by SOML; the consortium maintains an annual review cycle to keep the curriculum framework aligned with evolving classroom practice.
Roadmap
Where we are, where we’re heading.
-
Nov 2025
Done
Project kickoff
🇮🇹 Rome · hosted by CRES · 18 November 2025
First face-to-face of all six partners. Goals, work-package planning and the first joint design sprint.
-
Q1 – Q2 2026
Done
Country-by-country needs assessment
🇳🇱 🇲🇹 🇮🇹 🇱🇹 Teacher and student consultations in all four countries
Findings feed into the SPARK curriculum framework that frames the rest of the project.
-
Q3 2026 → Q2 2027
In progress
Content production
8 animated videos (×4 languages = 32) · gamified e-learning modules · virtual escape room
The creative core of SPARK takes shape across the consortium, with continuous quality review by CRES.
-
Apr 2027
Upcoming
Training event & transnational meeting
🇳🇱 Leeuwarden · hosted by Stichting Incubator (INQ)
Partners trained on the e-learning tooling and Virtual Escape Room ahead of the piloting phase.
-
Jan → May 2027
Upcoming
Classroom piloting
🇳🇱 🇲🇹 🇮🇹 🇱🇹 100+ students across the four partner countries
Real teachers, real classrooms. Feedback feeds into the final round of revisions. Piloting report follows in June.
-
Sep 2027
Upcoming
Final TPM & review
🇳🇱 Roermond · hosted by SOML
Last transnational meeting (project month 23): peer-review of pilots, final improvements, sustainability planning.
-
Oct 2027
Upcoming
Multiplier event & open-access release
🇳🇱 Leeuwarden · hosted by Stichting Incubator (INQ)
Full SPARK toolkit released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA — free for any school in the EU.
How it comes together
Four work packages, one shared mission
WP1 — Coordination, quality & risk management
Overall project and financial steering, quality assurance procedures, risk mitigation, sustainability planning and external evaluation.
WP2 — Further gap analysis, design & content
Country-specific needs assessment, a new interdisciplinary curriculum and learning outcomes connecting financial literacy with STEM/STEAM practice.
WP3 — Online learning, virtual escape room & piloting
The creative core of SPARK: a gamified e-learning toolkit, a full virtual escape room, and eight animated whiteboard videos — each translated into four languages.
WP4 — Communication, dissemination & exploitation
Bringing SPARK's results to the widest possible audience through multiplier events, open-access publishing, webinars and this public platform.
The consortium
Six partners. Four countries. One map.
Stichting Onderwijs Midden-Limburg (SOML)
Dutch educational foundation running seven secondary schools for 7,000+ students.
Partner profile →Stichting Incubator (INQ)
Startup incubator active since 2010, with deep expertise in financial education and open-access learning.
Partner profile →youTHrive
Maltese learning organisation specialising in gamification, digital skills and inclusive training.
Partner profile →
CRES — Centro di Ricerche e Studi Europei
Italian research centre focused on future-of-business, digital innovation and quality assurance.
Partner profile →
San Ġorġ Preca College — Ħamrun Secondary
Maltese secondary school with active STEAM and inclusion programmes.
Partner profile →
Kauno Simono Daukanto Progimnazija
Lithuanian progymnasium with a focus on interdisciplinary STEAM and gender-inclusive learning.
Partner profile →From the newsroom
Milestones, classroom stories, and the occasional plot twist.
Eighteen STEM-meets-finance best practices wanted by mid-June
Each partner is asked to surface three classroom examples of STEAM and personal-finance teaching done well. The combined catalogue feeds the SPARK curriculum framework and the…
Country needs assessment closes — national reports in
Six weeks of student surveys, teacher interviews and company input have been compiled into four national reports — the first concrete look at what SPARK's curriculum…
Spring survey wave reaches schools in four countries
Student and company questionnaires are live across all four partner countries — first data from the field starts arriving in the SPARK shared Drive.
Eight animated videos, four languages — scripting phase opens
The storyboard for our first whiteboard animation, "Why compound interest is a scientific phenomenon", is now in review with partner schools before voice-over recording.