Sir, – The latest appeal to restore Northern Ireland government funding to one of the most successful cross-Border initiatives set up following the Belfast Agreement has been rejected by David Sterling, head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service.
This means that the Standing Conference on Teacher Education North and South (SCoTENS), which until 2017 received funding from both governments on the island of Ireland, is currently funded uniquely by the Department of Education and Skills in Dublin.
SCoTENS is a network of 24 colleges of education, university education departments, teaching councils, curriculum councils, education trade unions and education centres on the island of Ireland with a responsibility for and interest in teacher education.
After a successful initial meeting in Belfast in 2000, SCoTENS was established in 2003 to create a unique safe space for teacher educators – North and South – to come together and discuss issues of common interest, and explore ways of co-operating closely together. A part of the broader peace dynamic that was gathering momentum on the island of Ireland at the time following the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, it has always been rooted in the deepest commitment to quality teaching and learning for all. We believe that SCoTENS is the only network of its kind operating across a contested border in the world.
Since it was founded in 2003, SCoTENS has organised a popular annual cross-Border conference for educators and teacher educators which attracts international speakers; an annual seed funding programme which to date has funded 120 research projects led by North-South partnerships; and, an annual North-South student teacher exchange which has allowed 250 student teachers to experience teaching placement in the neighbouring jurisdiction.
The work of SCoTENS was evaluated in 2011 by a team from Oxford University led by Prof John Furlong who found the network to be “an incredible achievement” which has produced “an enormous amount”.
From its creation SCoTENS was funded in equal measure by Northern and Southern departments as well as membership fees from higher education institutions across Ireland.
In the South £25,000 annual funding is provided by the Department of Education and Skills. In Northern Ireland £12,500 funding was provided by the Department of Education and the Department for Employment and Learning (more recently the Department for the Economy). This matched funding continued until the 2017/18 financial year when both northern departments unilaterally withdrew funding, reducing the overall income by 25 per cent, and severely limiting the extent of the cross-Border activity.
While we appreciate the significant budgetary pressures on all Northern Ireland departments, we believe that this change of policy sends out a very negative message regarding cross-Border co-operation, and threatens one of our most successful cross-Border institutions.
We therefore call for the immediate restoration of funding from the two Northern departments which would allow SCoTENS to continue to develop its important cross-Border work, made all the more significant in this current climate of heightened uncertainty and tension around Brexit. – Yours, etc,
Dr MARIA CAMPBELL,
St Angela’s College, Sligo
(Southern Co-chair) &
Dr NOEL PURDY,
Stranmillis University
College, Belfast
(Northern ~Co-chair),
Standing Conference on
Teacher Education North
and South, Armagh.