The Government is to provide €24 million for an initiative to tackle educational disadvantage in communities across Northern Ireland.
The funds will come from the Government’s Shared Island initiative, which aims to harness the potential of the Belfast Agreement by enhancing cross-Border co-operation.
Northern Ireland’s department of education will have responsibility for the delivery of the funded programme over the next two years.
Informed sources say there is potential for further funding which could be augmented with the support of the British government.
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Minister for Education Norma Foley met the DUP’s Paul Givan, Northern’s Ireland’s minister for education, on Wednesday to announce details of the programme in Lisburn.
The “Raise” scheme aims to boost educational outcomes for young people by delivering a range of supports for children in 15 areas across Northern Ireland.
Ms Foley said she was delighted that the Government was able to support this initiative as part of its long-standing co-operation with the Northern Ireland executive on education attainment.
“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,” she said.
“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.”
Mr Givan said educational underachievement was a problem which has persisted for many years and was linked to economic disadvantage.
The funding, he said, will contribute greatly in efforts to remove the barriers that prevent many children and young people from engaging in learning and further work to forge strong partnerships between schools, families and communities.
“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.”
He said there was an opportunity for bothcountries to learn from each other’s effective practices and the funding will be used to support many thousands of learners across Northern Ireland for a long time to come.
The initiative will include strands incorporating creativity in schools and teacher exchange, which are still under development.
The 15 areas identified which will receive support include schools will include Antrim, the Ards peninsula, Ballymena, Belfast, Carrick, Coleraine, Derry, Dungannon, Enniskillen, Limavady, Lisburn, Lurgan and Craigavon, Newry, Newtownabbey and Portadown.
