IFIP Task Force on ‘Sustaining relevant digital inclusive education for young people (5-18 years of age)’ : Northern Ireland Case Study

Passey, Don (2025) IFIP Task Force on ‘Sustaining relevant digital inclusive education for young people (5-18 years of age)’ : Northern Ireland Case Study. [Report]

Text (IFIP NI Case Study final 2)
IFIP_NI_Case_Study_final_2.pdf
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Abstract

The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) was founded in 1960 under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as a federation for societies working in information processing. Set up by the President of IFIP in 2022, the work of an IFIP Task Force has sought to gain an international perspective to support the UN, UNESCO, ITU, affiliated organisations, national societies, regional and local organisations in moving forward a focus on ‘Sustaining relevant digital inclusive education for young people (5-18 years of age)’. Interim IFIP Task Force findings identified five key sustaining factors that the Task Force believed warranted specific and particular attention: aspiration; diversity, inclusion, the digital divide and the under-represented; computational thinking and its links to problem-solving; developing teacher practices; and short- and long-term plans and actions . Using these five key sustaining factors as a framework, the details of the associated case study reported in this document show how these relate strongly to specific UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) . As Northern Ireland (NI) can demonstrate how a long-term strategy and development has led to successes, and how challenges have been tackled over the period of the development of relevant digital inclusive education in NI over a sustained, long-term (in 2024) 35-year period from an initial start in 1989 with the Computerised Local Administration System for Schools (CLASS) project, a case study of how this has been done is reported here. Chapter 3 of this document offers a timeline of educational technology being implemented across Northern Ireland’s schools, to position the IFIP case study in the local context. Chapters 4 to 8 detail how the NI education technology development relates to the IFIP Task Force’s key sustaining factors. Chapter 9 provides an overview of resourcing involved, from a non-cost perspective, as costs need to be considered nationally and do not necessarily easily relate from one nation’s costs to another. The resources described in Chapter 9 are concerned with personnel involvement, personnel time, and physical and management resources. It should be noted that this case study is concerned with details that relate to the focus of the IFIP Task Force for 5-18-year-old young people, whilst, in NI, education concerns a wider 4-18-year-old age group.