Minister Simon Harris launches Power2Progress

Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris launches Power2Progress, an educational intervention in 21 DEIS schools nationally which is designed to build educational resilience in schools. The programme allows each of the 21 schools to ask their senior cycle pupils to select subject areas in which they would benefit from additional tuition. 

This tuition is provided by UCD student teachers, on-site, in schools, after school hours. The programme also involves a career guidance/mentoring dimension which builds a foundation and support network to empower students to think about and apply for further and higher education and apprenticeship pathways. It includes outreach days to UCD in order to de-mystify higher education, apprenticeships and career paths. 

Each of the 600 pupils signed up to the programme is provided with their own laptop which has been a game changer in many of these schools. Finally, there is a PhD aligned to the project with a view to gathering data on the initiative and informing policy.