EUROPE is coming to Cork this month. Representatives from 16 European cities will attend TURAS, a seminar organised by Cork Teachers Centre and the school attendance department of Cork Corporation.

In addition, representatives from national agencies with responsibility of COMENIUS Action 2, which deals with intercultural education, will attend the seminar in UCC, from September 26th to 28th.

TURAS is an acronym for "Towards Understanding and Achievement in Schools and Society". "In this year of lifelong learning, a lot of focus is on trying to keep people in education so the acronym TURAS, signifying a journey, is particularly apt," explains Bart Bambury, director of Cork Teachers' Centre.

The theme emanated from a local concern about disadvantaged youth particularly early school leavers, says Bambury. The seminar will include workshops on "The Intercultural classroom" and "Travellers and Gypsy Education".

The workshop on traveller education will "try to grapple with why traveller children rarely proceed to second level", says Bambury, while the workshop on the intercultural classroom will include the use of theatre to examine issues that would not normally arise in the classroom.

Turin will facilitate "In-service training of teachers in relation to the language development of bilingual pupils" while Birmingham will facilitate "Inner-city regeneration".

The conference will be addressed by Dr Adrian Hoffman of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and Professor Aine Hyland of UCC. Cork Teachers Centre is part of the Eurocities DIECEC network which works to improve co-operation in the field of intercultural education.

One positive spin-off has been an improved awareness of networking, according to Bambury. He says the collaboration between the centre, Cork Corporation, DIECEC, the Department of Education and the European Commission in organising the seminar is a positive example of this type of networking.