Schools positive about working together through shared project [impartialreporter.com]
- Published: 08 October 2010
Progress reports provided by five participating school principals gave a flavour of the achievements of the Fermanagh Trust Shared Education Programme in its first year.
Representing the primary and post primary sector, they shared their experiences last Thursday afternoon as an independent report - reviewing the first year of the FTSEP - was launched at the Lough Erne Resort Hotel in Enniskillen.
The positive impact the ground-breaking pilot initiative has had on almost 1,900 participating pupils and 50 schools throughout Fermanagh since its outset in September 2009 was discussed by a number of speakers.
And with almost 104,000 hours of shared education having taken place during the first year, the overriding finding of the report was that the FTSEP had resulted in a significant level of cross-community contact between schools and pupils in Fermanagh.
Cross-border contact was delivered in some of the partnerships with the Programme including three schools from the Republic of Ireland.
98% of participating primary school teachers and pupils felt that the Programme resulted in greater opportunities for inter-sector sharing and collaboration. 100% of participating post-primary pupils felt that the Programme helped to reduce fear, suspicion and mistrust of the other community – in fact 62% felt this was either fully or mostly achieved.
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