National Strategy for Higher Education 2030 Progress Report Q4 2012

The National Strategy for Higher Education was launched in January 2011. In order to ensure effective oversight of implementation of the strategy the Department of Education and Skills has established an Implementation Oversight Group. The Oversight Group is co-ordinating, monitoring and reporting on the implementation of recommendations contained in the National Strategy on an ongoing basis in conjunction with other expertise and stakeholders as required. The Oversight Group has agreed a short to medium term Implementation Progress reporting template that details actions under four broad strategic headings together with a number of supporting objectives. The strategic headings are congruent with the aims of the National Strategy. Each action is the responsibility of a designated organisation. It is the intention of the Department of Education and Skills to report regularly on the implementation of the strategy.

'Education for Sustainability' - The National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development in Ireland, 2014-2020

This National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been developed by the Department of Education and Skills (DES), in consultation with key stakeholders. It provides a framework to support the contribution that the education sector is making and will continue to make towards a more sustainable future at a number of levels: individual, community, local, national and international. This strategy is primarily influenced by the national strategy on sustainable development, Our Sustainable Future - A Framework for Sustainable Development in Ireland (hereafter referred to as Our Sustainable Future), which was published by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in 2012. It is also framed within the current context of limited financial resources. The result is an ESD strategy that seeks to challenge individuals, organisations and society as a whole, but particularly in educational contexts, through recommendations that are pragmatic rather than aspirational in nature.

Review of Ireland's International Education Strategy 2013 - consultation Paper

Investing in Global Relationships: Ireland’s International Education Strategy 2010 – 2015 was published in September 2010. Significant progress has been made in implementing this strategy, to complement and support the work undertaken at institutional level: - A strong national brand is now in place: Education in Ireland, managed by Enterprise Ireland. - There is much closer alignment between education and immigration policies. - A new Government of Ireland Scholarship has been established, managed by the Higher Education Authority. - An International Education Marketing Fund has been developed which allows institutions to collaborate in Enterprise Ireland- led national marketing initiatives. - Promotional efforts are taking place in the priority markets of the USA, Brazil, China, India, SE Asia and the Gulf. Ministers have visited each of the priority markets in the last two years. - Ireland is participating at national level in major international scholarship schemes such as Science Without Borders (Brazil) and the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme (Saudi Arabia). - Statutory provision is now in place for an international education mark and code of practice, which will be rolled out in 2014 by Qualifications and Quality Assurance Ireland (QQI). - International student numbers have risen in priority sectors: 14% growth in the English language sector and 9% growth in higher education since 2010. - Ireland’s international education offering has also diversified, including with increasingly significant levels of cross- border provision. However, global demand for education continues to change rapidly. There continues to be a massive expansion in demand for education around the world, particularly in emerging markets with growing middle classes.

Report and Recommendations for a Traveller Education Strategy

Irish Travellers are an indigenous minority who, according to historical evidence, have been part of Irish society for centuries. They have a long shared history, value system, language, customs and traditions that make them a group recognised by themselves and others as distinct. This distinctive life-style and culture, based on a nomadic tradition, sets them apart from the settled population. The history of the Traveller community includes a struggle to uphold their distinct cultural identity and to maintain a nomadic way of life. For the purposes of this report it is accepted that Travellers have shared a nomadic tradition and a means of communication, beliefs, values and practices distinct from the majority culture.

Report and Recommendations for a Traveller Education Strategy

Irish Travellers are an indigenous minority who, according to historical evidence, have been part of Irish society for centuries. They have a long shared history, value system, language, customs and traditions that make them a group recognised by themselves and others as distinct. This distinctive life-style and culture, based on a nomadic tradition, sets them apart from the settled population. The history of the Traveller community includes a struggle to uphold their distinct cultural identity and to maintain a nomadic way of life. For the purposes of this report it is accepted that Travellers have shared a nomadic tradition and a means of communication, beliefs, values and practices distinct from the majority culture.

PHA Corporate Strategy 2011-2015

The PHA Corporate Strategy has been developed with input from staff across the PHA and taking account of feedback from external stakeholders.� It is a high level document, setting out the direction for the PHA over the next few years, and will be supported by the annual PHA Corporate Business Plan, Directorate Business Plans and the Joint Commissioning Plan.� The Strategy was approved by the PHA board at the November 2011 board meeting.�The PHA Corporate strategy sets out the role, direction and priorities of the PHA for the next four years, taking account of the requirements of the Comprehensive Spending Review.The goals set out in this strategy�are supported by annual plans detailing how the goals will be achieved.The strategy outlines the following:protecting health;improving health and wellbeing;improving quality and safety;improving early detection.

Consultation on Personal and Public Involvement strategy

Personal and Public Involvement (PPI) is an integral element of effective commissioning and is underpinned by a core set of values and principles - involving and listening to people in order to help us make services better.It brings about a number of recognised benefits if fully embraced into our culture and practice, these include:Use of service user knowledge and expertise;Better priority setting and decision making;More responsive, appropriate, efficient and tailored services;Transformation and reduction of complaints;Increased levels of service satisfaction;Increased dignity and self worth.The Public Health Agency (PHA) and Health and Social Care Board (HSCB) have now developed a joint Personal and Public Involvement (PPI) Strategy after extensive engagement and discussion. The Strategy has been approved by both organisations and is now being formally consulted on during the period 23rd June 2011 to 15th September 2011.The Strategy is now available for your consideration. We have developed the following documents (please see attachments below):Valuing People, Valuing Their Participation. Involving You and Listening to You Consultation Document.Valuing People, Valuing Their Participation, Involving You and Listening to You. [An Easy Read version of the Personal and Public Involvement Strategy].Valuing People, Valuing Their Participation. [An Equality and Human Rights Screening of the Strategy].Key Questions to guide consideration of the Personal and Public Involvement Strategy.People are encouraged to read the Strategy and to let us have your views.� There is a set of Key Questions, but any comments, ideas and or suggestions that you may have, that could support us in our efforts to embed Personal and Public Involvement into our culture and practice, would be most welcome.Responses should be returned by 4.00pm on Thursday 15th September 2011 to:By post:Martin QuinnRegional PPI LeadPublic Health AgencyGransha Park House15 Gransha ParkLondonderryBT47 6FNBy email: siobhan.carlin@hscni.net By telephone: (028) 7186 0086A more detailed version of the consultation document is avalable by clicking here or contacting Siobhan Carlin, email: siobhan.carlin@hscni.net, Tel: (028) 7186 0086.If you require any of these documents in an alternative format such as Braille, larger print or in another language if you are not fluent in English, please do not hesitate to contact us.A report of feedback received as part of this consultation can be made available upon request.Please be aware that the PHA and HSCB are also currently consulting on the Community Development Strategy.You are invited to consider responding to this consultation as well if appropriate.

Valuing People, Valuing Their Participation - A Strategy for Personal and Public Involvement for the Public Health Agency and Health and Social Care Board

Personal and Public Involvement (PPI) is about involving those who use Health and Social Care (HSC) services, or care for those who use services, with those who plan and deliver services. This involvement can sometimes relate to individuals (personal), or groups, or the wider community (public).This Strategy shows the direction that both the PHA and the HSCB are committed to, in their development of PPI.

Community Development Strategy May 2012

The Community Development Strategy for Health and Wellbeing has been developed jointly by the Health and Social Care Board and the Public Health Agency.�The main purpose of the strategy is to recognise and support the important and pivotal role that community development plays in improving health and wellbeing.�The HSCB and PHA want to see strong, resilient communities where everyone has good health and wellbeing - places where people look out for each other and have community pride in where they live.�We seek to narrow the gap in health inequalities and improve the health and wellbeing of the population.�This means working to address the determinants of ill health and reducing risk factors, including those associated with poverty and social exclusion, and this can only be achieved in partnership with the community.The strategy was influenced by a widespread consultation in 2011 - details available here - during which over 300 individuals and organisations attended workshops and 60 written responses were received.�The following documents are attached below:Community Development Strategy - Consultation ResponsesCommunity Development Strategy - Executive SummaryCommunity Development Action PlanCommunity Development Strategy Community Development Strategy - Performance Management Framework

A review of the breastfeeding strategy for Northern Ireland

This review of the Breastfeeding strategy for Northern Ireland, was led by the Breastfeeding Strategy Review Group and carried out by the PHA. It aimed to examine progress on the recommendations of the document and potential barriers to implementation, by consulting widely with key stakeholders. A number of suggestions on the way forward towards formulating a new strategy also emerged.�

Strategy for personal and public involvement in Health and Social Care research

This report outlines the strategic need for, and benefits of,�personal and public involvement�to all levels of Health and Social Care Research�&�Development Division activity.

Strategy for personal and public involvement

Local and national policy increasingly emphasises the central role of service users and the public in shaping Health and Social Care (HSC). This is the second edition of the HSC R&D Division��'s Personal and Public Involvement (PPI) Strategy, which highlights the importance of involving patients and the public in research and outlines the progress already made in implementing PPI in research in Northern Ireland.

Correlated evolution of mating strategy and inbreeding depression within and among populations of the hermaphroditic snail Physa acuta

Inbreeding depression is one of the main forces opposing the evolution of self-fertilization. Of central importance is the hypothesis that inbreeding depression and selfing coevolve antagonistically, generating either low selfing rate and high inbreeding depression or vice versa. However, there is limited evidence for this coevolution within species. We investigated this topic in the hermaphroditic snail Physa acuta. In this species, isolated individuals delay the onset of egg laying compared to individuals having access to mates. Longer delays (''waiting times'') indicate more intense selfing avoidance. We measured inbreeding depression and waiting time in a large quantitative-genetic experiment (281 outbred families derived from 26 natural populations). We observed large genetic variance for both traits and a strong positive genetic covariance between them, most of which resided within rather than among populations. It means that, within populations, individuals with higher mutation load avoided selfing more strongly on average. This genetic covariance may result from pleiotropy and/or linkage disequilibrium. Whatever its genetic architecture, the fact it emerges specifically when individuals are deprived of mates suggests it is not fortuitous and rather reflects the action of natural selection. We conclude that a diversity of mating strategies can arise within populations subjected to variation in inbreeding depression.

Mise en oeuvre de protocoles spatiaux pour analyser la modulation de processus cognitifs en fonction de la dimension émotionnelle chez le rongeur

Résumé : Emotion et cognition sont deux termes généralement employés pour désigner des processus psychiques de nature opposée. C'est ainsi que les sciences cognitives se sont longtemps efforcées d'écarter la composante «chaude »des processus «froids »qu'elles visaient, si ce n'est pour montrer l'effet dévastateur de la première sur les seconds. Pourtant, les processus cognitifs (de collecte, maintien et utilisation d'information) et émotioAnels (d'activation subjective, physiologique et comportementale face à ce qui est attractif ou aversif) sont indissociables. Par l'approche neuro-éthologique, à l'interface entre le substrat biologique et les manifestations comportementales, nous nous sommes intéressés à une fonction cognitive essentielle, la fonction mnésique, classiquement exprimée chez le rongeur par l'orientation spatiale. Au niveau du substrat, McDonald et White (1993) ont montré la dissociation de trois systèmes de mémoire, avec les rôles de l'hippocampe, du néostriatum et de l'amygdale dans l'encodage des informations respectivement épisodiques, procédurales et émotionnelles. Nous nous sommes penchés sur l'interaction entre ces systèmes en fonction de la dimension émotionnelle par l'éclairage du comportement. L'état émotionnel de l'animal dépend de plusieurs facteurs, que nous avons tenté de contrôler indirectement en comparant leurs effets sur l'acquisition, dans diverses conditions, de la tâche de Morris (qui nécessite la localisation dans un bassin de la position d'une plate-forme submergée), ainsi que sur le style d'exploration de diverses arènes, ouvertes ou fermées, plus ou moins structurées par la présence de tunnels en plexiglas transparent. Nous avons d'abord exploré le rôle d'un composant du système adrénergique dans le rapport à la difficulté et au stress, à l'aide de souris knock-out pour le récepteur à la noradrénaline a-1 B dans un protocole avec 1 ou 4 points de départ dans un bassin partitionné. Ensuite, nous nous sommes penchés, chez le rat, sur les effets de renforcement intermittent dans différentes conditions expérimentales. Dans ces conditions, nous avons également tenté d'analyser en quoi la situation du but dans un paysage donné pouvait interférer avec les effets de certaines formes de stress. Finalement, nous avons interrogé les conséquences de perturbations passées, y compris le renforcement partiel, sur l'organisation des déplacements sur sol sec. Nos résultats montrent la nécessité, pour les souris cont~ô/es dont l'orientation repose sur l'hippocampe, de pouvoir varier les trajectoires, ce qui favoriserait la constitution d'une carte cognitive. Les souris a->B KO s'avèrent plus sensibles au stress et capables de bénéficier de la condition de route qui permet des réponses simples et automatisées, sous-tendues par l'activité du striatum. Chez les rats en bassin 100% renforcé, l'orientation apparaît basée sur l'hippocampe, relayée par le striatum pour le développement d'approches systématiques et rapides, avec réorientation efficace en nouvelle position par réactivation dépendant de l'hippocampe. A 50% de renforcement, on observe un effet du type de déroulement des sessions, transitoirement atténué par la motivation Lorsque les essais s'enchaînent sans pause intrasession, les latences diminuent régulièrement, ce qui suggère une prise en charge possible par des routines S-R dépendant du striatum. L'organisation des mouvements exploratoires apparaît dépendante du niveau d'insécurité, avec différents profils intermédiaires entre la différentiation maximale et la thigmotaxie, qui peuvent être mis en relation avec différents niveaux d'efficacité de l'hippocampe. Ainsi, notre travail encourage à la prise en compte de la dimension émotionnelle comme modulatrice du traitement d'information, tant en phase d'exploration de l'environnement que d'exploitation des connaissances spatiales. Abstract : Emotion and cognition are terms widely used to refer to opposite mental processes. Hence, cognitive science research has for a long time pushed "hot" components away from "cool" targeted processes, except for assessing devastating effects of the former upon the latter. However, cognitive processes (of information collection, preservation, and utilization) and emotional processes (of subjective, physiological, and behavioral activation roue to attraction or aversion) are inseparable. At the crossing between biological substrate and behavioral expression, we studied a chief cognitive function, memory, classically shown in animals through spatial orientation. At the substrate level, McDonald et White (1993) have shown a dissociation between three memory systems, with the hippocampus, neostriatum, and amygdala, encoding respectively episodic, habit, and emotional information. Through the behavior of laboratory rodents, we targeted the interaction between those systems and the emotional axis. The emotional state of an animal depends on different factors, that we tried to check in a roundabout way by the comparison of their effects on acquisition, in a variety of conditions, of the Morris task (in which the location of a hidden platform in a pool is required), as well as on the exploration profile in different apparatus, open-field and closed mazes, more or less organized by clear Plexiglas tunnels. We first tracked the role, under more or less difficult and stressful conditions, of an adrenergic component, with knock-out mice for the a-1 B receptor in a partitioned water maze with 1 or 4 start positions. With rats, we looked for the consequences of partial reinforcement in the water maze in different experimental conditions. In those conditions, we further analyzed how the situation of the goal in the landscape could interfere with the effect of a given stress. At last, we conducted experiments on solid ground, in an open-field and in radial mazes, in order to analyze the organization of spatial behavior following an aversive life event, such as partial reinforcement training in the water maze. Our results emphasize the reliance of normal mice to be able to vary approach trajectories. One of our leading hypotheses is that such strategies are hippocampus-dependent and are best developed for of a "cognitive map like" representation. Alpha-1 B KO mice appear more sensitive to stress and able to take advantage of the route condition allowing simple and automated responses, most likely striatum based. With rats in 100% reinforced water maze, the orientation strategy is predominantly hippocampus dependent (as illustrated by the impairment induced by lesions of this structure) and becomes progressively striatum dependent for the development of systematic and fast successful approaches. Training towards a new platform position requires a hippocampus based strategy. With a 50% reinforcement rate, we found a clear impairment related to intersession disruption, an effect transitorily minimized by motivation enhancement (cold water). When trials are given without intrasession interruption, latencies consistently diminish, suggesting a possibility for striatum dependent stimulus-response routine to occur. The organization of exploratory movements is shown to depend on the level of subjective security, with different intermediary profiles between maximum differentiation and thigmotaxy, which can be considered in parallel with different efficiency levels of the hippocampus dependent strategies. Thus, our work fosters the consideration of emotion as a cognitive treatment modulator, during spatial exploration as well as spatial learning. It leads to a model in which the predominance of hippocampus based exploration is challenged by training conditions of various nature.