Minister for Education Norma Foley has announced a brand-new research project, which is aimed at helping rural primary schools.
The scheme will involve local, rural schools coming together in clusters to collaborate, as well as coming together with solutions to commonly-faced problems and trialling innovative new solutions within their schools.
There will be a total of six trial clusters nationwide, with one in Donegal, as well as others in counties Galway, Kerry, Wicklow and Waterford.
The Department of Education say that some of the innovative strategies deployed in these schools will involve sharing teaching and learning aspects of the curriculum through ICT, closer collaboration between schools to identify common issues for pupils as well as Special Education provision, and the trialling of multiple schools sharing a single principal.
The trial project will last a total of two years, and begin at the start of the new school year in September.
