Professional development for staff in Northern Ireland schools today is currently not being sufficiently provided for by the Dept of Education and Education Authority due to lack of funding. It is therefore up to schools to seek out ways in which to ensure their staff are up to date in modern methodologies to provide the best possible outcomes for their pupils. To this end St Oliver Plunkett Nursery and Primary School applied for and was successful in securing funding through the British Council and Erasmus to provide continued professional development for our staff. Our key areas, within school, to develop further training in are ICT and Special Needs, and as one of 5schools in Northern Ireland, we received a grant of 25,390 euros to do this. All training must be taken in Europe and reports completed throughout the process. Mrs Maguire and Mrs Nixon were the first members of staff to take part in one of these courses, during mid term. Both traveled to Malta to the Executive Training Institute to take an intensive one week course on Empowerment in ITC Skills. This course provided training in website and blog training alongside how to use them for the benefit of school.
In December Mrs Kerr took part in a week long course in Dublin entitled “There’s an app for that” which provided training on the use of apps to teach key areas of the Curriculum.
In January Mrs Maguire spent 1week in Finland learning about and observing the Education system there, on a course entitled Benchmarking for Principals. This gave Principals the opportunity to find out first hand why Finland is one of the top education systems in the world.
In April Mrs Mullin spent 1week in Barcelona completing a course on Special Needs and visiting schools.
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