Formal schooling is widely regarded as a single event in an ongoing life process of informal learning. It is provision for life-long learning, made up of formal education, which becomes the focus of museum education. The last referred for years to the use of museum collections for the education of school children. However, increasing research into education and the ways in which people learn has resulted in an alternative, more progressive attitude towards learning in museums. Motivation has become the key component in learning. For thousands of years people learnt 'on the job'. If they were not motivated to do that, they went hungry. This soon made them motivated! Then learning moved into institutions called 'schools', and in these a method of instruction evolved which often inhibits motivation. The idea then arose that learners need to be motivated. Museums are ideal places for this kind of learning. In the museum we have the concrete experience of the visit, the sensory and intellectual engagement with objects. They are places where learning happens: our ideas about the past, about art, about science, about the world we live in are developed and changed by our encounters with other places, times and cultures represented by their artefacts. Children who usually feel bored or restless at school can engage afresh on a visit to a museum or gallery with the values, ideas and beliefs that shape our world. Recent thinking on education has stressed the importance of creativity in learning. Museums offer a proven way to develop the imagination and learn to solve problems in innovative ways. Moreover, as Eilean Hooper-Greenhill points out, 'the educational role of the museum has become part of cultural politics'. Museums have the ability to cater for differentiated audiences and their preferred learning styles. The right to participation in culture is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- and the opportunity to visit a museum or gallery has proved beneficial to the acceptance of the 'other'. Bearing all that in mind, there has never been a better time to develop further the relationship between museums and schools. National, regional and local bodies are actively encouraging it and schools themselves are looking for opportunities to enhance their curriculum work in imaginative and effective ways. This paper will look at the ways in which museums can engage with schools and will discuss some innovative techniques, structures and programmes -not limited to a specific gallery space- that can bring the school curriculum to life -from history and geography to science, maths and technology. Emphasis will be given on how museum education can help children familiarise with and accept cultural differences in multi-ethnic communities, while highlighting the common historical and socio-cultural constructs that unite the populations of the member countries. Hopefully, it will also provide an opportunity to disseminate ideas and views between all those involved with schools and museums, formal and informal learning.