Favourable evaluation of SCoTENS work from Oxford University team

Download a copy of the 2011 SCoTENS Evaluation

A team from Oxford University’s Department of Education, led by Professor John Furlong, delivered a highly complimentary evaluation of SCoTENS work in the period 2003-2011 in early October. They concluded:

‘Taken overall, the findings of the evaluation are overwhelmingly positive. Despite limited and sometimes precarious funding, significant dependence on the goodwill of volunteers and the support of a paid secretariat with myriad other responsibilities, SCoTENS has achieved a great deal. For those teacher educators aware of and involved in its work, SCoTENS is highly valued. Many we spoke to believed that the majority of initiatives SCoTENS was involved in would not have happened without its leadership and expert administration. Our evidence makes clear that SCoTENS has enabled the development of networks and encouraged communication and contacts between significant numbers of teacher educators in the North and South of Ireland. Many respondents felt that through SCoTENS they had developed a greater knowledge and understanding of the educational systems and practices across the island of Ireland. The forms of collaboration encouraged by SCoTENS have, we found, stimulated genuine professional and personal development; they have also, many or our respondents believed, contributed to the peace process by helping to normalise relationships within and between the North and the South. There was widespread belief that despite its achievements, without SCoTENS’s continued existence, those achievements would rapidly fade’.