NSEC E-Consultation Context

North South Exchange Consortium Trial

Context

The advent of changes has seen had many positive impacts on the level of interaction between the [www.discovernorthernireland.com north of Ireland (Northern Ireland)] and the [www.irlgov.ie Republic of Ireland]. One of these is the increasing level of exchange and cooperation between education agencies. Over the last decades, thousands of schools and youth groups have participated in exchanges and cooperative activities between the [www.discovernorthernireland.com north] and [www.irlgov.ie south] of Ireland. This has increased steadily from initial small exchanges to become a highly complex web of cross-border activity with substantial financial support and diverse programme criteria and objectives.

Given this complexity, the Departments of Education north and south recognized that a cohesive and transparent structure was needed to manage and facilitate this tremendous exchange activity where in the last five years approximately 3,000 school and youth groups were supported, involving in excess of 55,000 participants in cross-border exchange and cooperative activities. The majority of organisations (64%) are drawn from the formal sector and 36% from the non-formal sector.

Given the high levels of activity in this area, the North South Exchange Consortium (NSEC) was given the task by the Department of Education (Northern Ireland) and the Department of Education and Science (Ireland) to act as an independent and impartial monitoring and evaluation group. NSEC, therefore, work in the context of a programme framework, which is currently being developed to:

• identify good practice
• identify the best use of resources and the added value of present cross-border programmes in the fields of formal and non-formal educational exchange and cooperation, with a view to advising the Departments on a more effective and efficient use of resources
• identify gaps in provision
• analyse the resources required and to invite and assess proposals for current and future providers to address those gaps
• to examine existing provision

A key element of the NSEC work plan is to develop and maintain lines of communication with various stakeholders involved in North-South Exchange programmes. More specifically they aim:

1. To manage the development and implementation of the North South School and Youth Exchange and Co-operation Programme Framework in partnership with the Department of Education and Science (Ireland) and the Department of Education (Northern Ireland).
2. To establish and maintain collaborative working relationships with the range of formal and non-formal education and youth work agencies [www.discovernorthernireland.com North] and [www.irlgov.ie South].
3. To ensure that NSEC has an effective and active media and public affairs capability and where appropriate articulate the Consortium’s position to the range of interested parties, including statutory, voluntary and private sector bodies.
4. To support and advise the Programme Management Committee and the Consortium through the development and provision of briefing papers, reports and presentations in respect of policy, strategy and operations.
5. To identify opportunities to respond to the needs of the educational and youth sectors in developing an intercultural and North/South dimension to their work.

NSEC, therefore, was very interested in developing additional channels of communication through e-technologies. This would both increase their capacity to run consultation initiatives and secondly, to facilitate consultations with large groups of their stakeholders such as school children.