Peace IV Shared Education Programme - Collaboration through Sharing in Education – CASE

The Peace IV Shared Education Programme will be led by the Education Authority (EA) in partnership with Léargas, and will address specific objective 1 of the Peace IV Programme: Shared Education. The key aim of the Programme will be to provide direct, sustained, curriculum-based contact between pupils and teachers from all backgrounds, through collaboration between schools from different sectors in order to promote good relations and enhance children’s skills and attitudes to contribute to a cohesive society. This will include: shared partnerships involving schools within Northern Ireland; shared partnerships involving schools in Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland; and shared partnerships involving schools within the border counties of Ireland. This will be achieved through a schools grant scheme and the provision of an appropriate CPD programme to incentivise and support schools to embark on shared education activities. The EA/Léargas partnership will be a cross border approach, which will capitalise on the skills, knowledge and technical expertise of personnel from both sides of the border in the development, implementation, financing and staffing of the Programme. The Programme will target schools that have limited or no experience of shared education. The key outputs for the Project, at March 2022, are: at least 280 schools involved in shared education; 2000 teachers trained with the capacity to facilitate shared education; and 135,000 participants in shared education classrooms. (Milestone Target for end of 2018 is 18,000). Activities that contribute to the outputs: Classroom based sustained shared curriculum experiences for children and young people across all sectors and phases. School and centre based continuous professional development for teachers, school leaders and pre-school professionals. Our overall Programme result is: the percentage of schools in the last academic year that have been involved in shared education with another school. The baseline value for 2013 is 76%. The target value for 2023 is 88%. This represents an increase of at least 12% of schools involved in shared education with another school. In achieving these results, the Programme would aim to: ensure that sharing in education becomes a central part of every child’s educational experience by providing opportunities for the sustained interaction of children from different backgrounds through their participation in curriculum-based common classes; build a culture of good relations amongst school children, and equipping them with the skills and attitudes to contribute to a society where the cycle of sectarianism and intolerance is broken; create opportunities for children and young people to have direct, sustained curriculum contact with children from another community background within the existing educational structures. This will facilitate new and increased friendships and contacts on a cross community basis. The contact facilitated by the Programme will have positive impacts on intergroup attitudes and behaviours, including a reduction in prejudice and promotion of more harmonious intergroup relations; enhance pupils and teachers’ capacity to understand and deal with difference in whatever form it occurs (informed by equality, human rights and the principles contained within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child); develop enhanced confidence and skills, among teachers and school leaders, to positively engage and lead shared education initiatives; enhance educational attainment, particularly for disadvantaged children and young people; and, develop positive attitudinal changes in the wider school community including parents and governors, who will be exposed to the principles and ethos underpinning shared education, which in turn will contribute to and help sustain the positive impacts on children. This Programme will prioritise work with schools within and across both jurisdictions and will target significant numbers of pupils coming from marginalised communities. This programme will focus on a development and competency-building approach to enable schools to embrace and promote diversity. The Programme model is iterative in nature, comprising five stages of progression. Funded shared education projects will have the opportunity to move through a developmental cycle over a period of time. The key beneficiaries of the Programme will be children and young people schools and teachers. Schools will be the principal point of access to the Programme. They can engage with other recognised organisations in the delivery and implementation of their projects but, in all cases, schools will be the key beneficiaries. Increasing the capacity of teachers in the area of Shared Education will form a core strand of project activity under Peace IV and will be delivered under a CPD strategy. Teachers who engage in CPD will be key in sustaining the work beyond the life-cycle of the Project.

The Collaboration And Sharing in Education (CASE) project received funding of almost €25 million under the PEACE IV theme of Shared Education. CASE was open to all schools in the six border counties of Ireland and those in Northern Ireland not involved in the Delivering Social Change Signature Project for Shared Education. Through working in partnership, the schools participating in CASE promoted community cohesion, enhanced educational outcomes for all pupils and provided shared professional development. Shared education enabled schools from different sectors and communities to work in partnership, providing opportunities for pupils, staff, and the wider community to engage in collaborative and meaningful learning experiences. Although the project was hampered by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020, the CASE team quickly began a new initiative - allowing them to continue supporting schools in their shared education journeys. ‘Share the Walk’ took advantage of already-established cross-border resources by teaming up pupils, staff and the wider school community with the ‘My Virtual Mission’ app which focused on achieving walking milestones. Each week, participants took virtual walks together and met the challenges the CASE team issued through the app. These tied in with not only the pupils’ wellbeing goals, but also the PE and maths curricula. As permanent reminders of their ‘travels’, pupils created posters of what they had discovered along the way - or their schools planted trees to mark the distances covered by the children. Key outcomes from the CASE Project: 350 Schools involved in shared education. 2,100 teachers trained with the capacity to facilitate shared education. 144,000 participants in shared education classrooms.