Education Ministers from Northern Ireland and Ireland have
officially announced the RAISE programme.
Education Minister was joined by Norma Foley TD,
Education Minister in Ireland, on a visit to a number of schools
in one of the identified localities today.
The RAISE initiative will deliver a range of education support
measures to help address educational underachievement and tackle
educational disadvantage through a whole community and
place-based approach which will operate in 15 areas across
Northern Ireland
The RAISE programme represents an investment of
£20million/€24million over the next two years, with the potential
for further funding.
Officially announcing the programme, Education Minister said:
“Educational underachievement linked to
economic disadvantage, is an issue that has persisted for many
years. The RAISE programme offers an important opportunity to
look afresh at the issues caused by deprivation and to drive
forward a whole community, place-based approach to remove the
barriers to learning and educational achievement that many of our
children and young people are facing.”
The RAISE programme will be complemented by two other
initiatives. Students will be able to connect through the arts as
part of the “Bringing Live Arts to Students and Teachers”
programme. Teachers will also benefit from the further
development of the in-person and online forum for sharing
education research in Ireland, known as the Teacher Research
Exchange (T-REX).
The Minister continued:
“This programme seeks to break the link between economic
disadvantage and educational under-achievement – ensuring that
the aspirations and outcomes of our children and young people are
not limited by their background. My department will now continue
to engage with key stakeholders in each RAISE locality through a
series of workshops over the coming weeks and months – to
identify needs, build the evidence base and bring forward
strategic plans for consideration.”
Welcoming the announcement of the RAISE programme, Minister Foley
TD, Minister for Education in Ireland said:
“I am delighted that the Irish Government has been able to
support this initiative through the Shared Island Fund as part of
our wider long-standing cooperation with the Northern Ireland
Executive on Education attainment issues.
“The ‘Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS)
Programme' in Ireland is supporting almost 260,000 students and
has helped to address concentrated educational disadvantage in a
targeted and equitable way across primary and post-primary
schools. There are many lessons that we can jointly learn from
working together with the Department of Education in Northern
Ireland on how we can support education attainment.”
Notes to editors:
- The Ministers visited Old Warren Primary School, Lisnagarvey
High School, Fort Hill Integrated Primary School and Fort Hill
Integrated College as part of today's official announcement.
- ‘A Fair Start' was published in 2021 by an Expert Panel
examining the link between educational underachievement and
socio-economic background. Its goals included drawing up an
Action Plan for change to ‘ensure all children and young people,
regardless of background are given the best start in life'.
- The Panel advocated that addressing educational
underachievement ‘means placing equality of opportunity at the
core of everything we do.' A key area in the Action Plan is
‘Promoting a whole community approach to education'. This has a
“place-based focus that delivers the greatest concentration of
effort in those localities with the greatest concentration of
educational underachievement”.
- The RAISE Programme will deliver a key action from “A Fair
Start” ‘involving a whole community approach to tackle
disadvantage which will be strategic in scale and collaborative
in nature, mandating co-design and the building of authentic
partnerships between schools and communities using a place-based
approach'.
- RAISE will operate in 15 areas across Northern Ireland,
supporting the Department of Education's vision that “every child
is happy, learning and succeeding while tackling educational
disadvantage and increasing aspiration. The localities are
within: Antrim, Ards
Peninsula, Ballymena, Belfast, Carrick, Coleraine, Derry
/ Londonderry, Dungannon, Enniskillen, Limavady, Lisburn, Lurgan
and Craigavon, Newry, Newtownabbey and Portadown.
