Integrated Education Bill passed in Northern assembly
A Law to encourage the Northern Ireland authorities to promote integrated education for protestant and catholic school pupils has been passed in the Northern assembly. The law was proposed by the Alliance Party and supported by the non-unionist parties. The Ulster Unionist Party opposed the bill but refused to back the ‘petition of concern’ mechanism…
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Labour launch bill to end single-gender school admissions within 10-15 years
Labour education spokesperson Aodhán Ó Ríordáin has published a bill to end single-gender school admission policies. Deputy Ó Ríordáin said the time has come to bring Ireland’s education system more in line with international norms. “The fact that so many of our schools are still separated by gender sends the wrong message to children at…
Leading the new Atlantic Technological University (ATU)
Dr Orla Flynn is the President of ATU, and was appointed in April 2022. She was president of the former GMIT since March 2020. The new university was officially opened on April 4th .Atlantic TU sees the dissolution of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Sligo and Letterkenny Institute of Technology.
People attached to their pets more likely to be lonely during lockdown, study finds
People who are strongly attached to their pets were more likely to suffer mental health problems during the Covid-19 lockdown than those who are less attached, new research from Queen’s University Belfast has revealed. Researchers from the School of Psychology at Queen’s surveyed 143 pet owners and 103 people who did not own pets, to…
2022 Mary Raftery journalism prize winner announced
Journalist Peter Maguire has won the Mary Raftery Prize for his feature on noteworthy.ie entitled ‘Speak or Survive: Sexual Violence Victims Still Fighting Roadblocks to Justice’. The Mary Raftery Prize is awarded annually to an individual or small team responsible for social affairs journalism produced on the island of Ireland in the calendar year preceding…
Ulster University leads on healthy ageing testbed in NI
The new healthy ageing testbed is trialling innovative approaches to tackling isolation and loneliness in older people. Northern Ireland has the most rapidly ageing population in the UK. The Northern Ireland consortium, led by Ulster University, has been awarded £50,000 as part of Connected Places Catapult, ‘Homes for Healthy Ageing Programme’. The funding from Connected…
Women from the Travelling Community Graduate from ‘life-changing’ UCC course
A group of women from the Travelling Community yesterday graduated at a conferring ceremony at UCC having completed a ‘life-changing’ course designed to empower leadership in their community. The Level 6 Leadership in the Community programme was co-created by the Southern Traveller Health Network; Adult and Continuing Education and supported by Access UCC. It serves…
Online peacebuilding course from WIT designer wins UNESCO award
A Peacebuilding in High Risk Communities course from the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning instructional designer has been awarded the UNESCO OER Implementation Award for Excellence Neill Wylie, Instructional Designer with WIT’s Centre for Technology Enhance Learning and a Guest Lecturer at the institute is one of a number of people worldwide to receive the…
European Commission to create a digital earth – Destination Earth
The European Commission (EC) has announced the Destination Earth initiative to creat a digital model of the Earth to combat the effects of climate change. Destination Earth (DestinE) and its development of digital earth twins are key to predicting the effects and building resilience to climate-change according to the EC. DestinE aims to develop –…
Wind supplied one third of power in March – WEI
Wind Energy Ireland has released its March Wind Energy report, which showed that wind energy provided 33 per cent of Ireland’s electricity in March 2022. However, Ireland’s dependence on imported fossil fuels for much of electricity generation drove wholesale prices to the highest monthly average since the Integrated Single Electricity Market was set up in…
Immediate and transformative action needed to stay below 1.5°C – An Taisce
The IPCC released the third part of their Sixth Assessment report on April 6, focused on climate change mitigation and an assessment of methods for reducing and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The report urges immediate and far reaching change in order to achieve the critical 1.5°C threshold on global heating. This will require…
Rapid change needed to meet net zero targets for livestock
A report published by the consortium CIEL (Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock) has identified that greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced if wide scale and highly effective mitigations are adopted on farms. The greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced from the main livestock types by 23 per cent and ammonia emissions by 15 per…
Met Eireann and NUIG team up on North Atlantic climate research
To improve understanding of the impact of the North Atlantic climate system on Ireland, Met Éireann is teaming up with climate researchers from NUI Galway – Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) to collaborate on a four-year project to improve its modelling using EC-Earth’s state-of-the-art Earth system model. EC-Earth is developed by a Europe-wide consortium…
Regional Education and Language Teams for Ukrainian families established
INTO President Joe McKeown has met with the Department of Education to discuss how primary and special schools could be best supported as Ukrainian families fleeing the war access education in Ireland. Minister for Education Norma Foley TD has announced the establishment of Regional Education and Language Teams (REALT) to support the needs of Ukrainian…
Cross-Border education partnership to support student teachers for equality-based schools
In conjunction with the Standing Conference on Teacher Education North and South, the Shared-Island Unit in the Department of the Taoiseach announced funding for a research project exploring provision enabling pre-service teachers to teach in diverse settings. Five partners are involved in the Educating About Difference Uniting Classrooms and Teacher Education (EDUCATE) action research…
Can DEIS really combat our entrenched inequality?
The recent announcement of an expansion to the DEIS scheme has raised questions about the ability of the education system to help disadvantaged student to overcome the hurdles they face. Does DEIS make a difference? Can it make up for the reality of inequality in Irish society? The data shows that targeting resources in the…
Dublin City University and National Flight Centre Pilot Academy
A New Flight Training Partnership in Dublin A new partnership between DCU Business School and the National Flight Centre Pilot Academy (NFC) was recently launched at Weston Airport, Dublin, by Simon Harris, T.D., Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. This collaboration will enable students to complete the B.Sc. in Aviation Management…
ASSA ABLOY Door Group calls to raise the standard of fire safety in schools
Door Group, a unit of ASSA ABLOY Opening Solutions UK & Ireland, is stressing the need for greater awareness of fire safety in education buildings, with a large percentage of fire doors in schools found to be non-compliant while undergoing inspections. Fire doors are one of the most important safety features in a building and…
Griffith College and the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland award a Creative Bursary to five schools
The Faculty of Journalism and Media Communications at Griffith College once again collaborated with IAPI on the Creative Bursary for DEIS post-primary schools. The aim of this initiative is to encourage students to consider careers in creative commercial sectors. This year applicants were asked to submit a communications campaign explaining how their school practices sustainability,…
Race equality in Higher Education – more to do says new HEA report
A survey commissioned to capture the lived experience of higher education staff in relation to race equality has been released by the HEA’s Centre of Excellence for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.In the survey results, a majority agreed with the statement that ‘race inequality exists in Irish higher education. Respondents from minority ethnic groups were more…