Education Minister has today launched a new
education strategy, TransformED, which will reform and
improve education delivery in Northern Ireland.
Setting out the most systematic programme of transformation in
over a generation, the strategy will focus on the core areas of
curriculum, assessment, qualifications, school improvement and
tackling educational disadvantage. Reform in each of these areas
will be underpinned by significant investment in high-quality
teacher professional development.
said: “This strategy
represents a break with what has gone before. For too long we
have focused on structural issues in Northern Ireland
and simply relied on our highly qualified workforce to
continue to produce excellent outcomes.
“The heart of education lies in the classroom. We need to
put aside these tired, old conversations and focus on what
children learn, how and for what purpose.
"Now we must focus on investing in and supporting
high-quality professional development for our school leaders and
teachers and relentlessly improving curriculum, pedagogy and
assessment.”
The strategy is accompanied by a ten-point plan for delivering
educational excellence, which draws together the key commitments
in the strategy. These can be viewed on the Department's website
at https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/articles/transformed-ni-transforming-teaching-and-learning-strategy-educational-excellence-northern-ireland
The Education Minister continued: “To ensure that our
education system is world-class, we must be willing to learn from
the best-performing education systems globally. This new strategy
sets out our determination to learn in a sophisticated way from
those countries which outperform us at present. It identifies the
core elements of excellence that are common across
high-performing jurisdictions and uses these to inform the way
forward in Northern Ireland.
“To tackle the weaknesses currently identified within our
system, we have published a ten-point plan that has been
developed from learning from the most effective and fastest
improving school systems in the world.
“Over the coming weeks I will make a series of important
announcements about assessment, professional learning, literacy
and numeracy and school improvement. The work on these is already
at an advanced stage.”
As work begins to implement the strategy, two school principals'
panels have been set-up to inform discussions on key policy
issues and to offer insights and advice.
concluded: “Our aim is
to ensure our education system is truly world-leading –
excellent, equitable, inclusive and able to meet the needs of all
children and young people in an ever-changing world. This
ambitious reform programme has the potential to transform
education in Northern Ireland for a generation.”
