Education in Divided Societies Network: the role of school collaboration in societies emerging from conflict

Societies emerging from conflict, or conflict-affected, often find it difficult to secure peace: there may be challenges in dealing with the legacy of conflict and in finding a cohesive approach to building a better and safer future. In many of these societies school systems are also divided, or have become so, which appears to render the challenges even more difficult. The Education in Divided Societies Network (EDS-N+) project aims to use the transformative potential of collaboration in education to help address these challenges, with the foci of collaboration involving teachers within schools, teachers between schools from different communities, and teachers working across different jurisdictions.

With the support of the GCRF Development Award, we will begin co-constructing a strategic network of key educational stakeholders in Northern Ireland (NI), Lebanon, Jordan, North Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), and Kosovo, all of whom work on peace building through education. The network will eventually co-create and co-support projects and activities that seek to address these key challenges. It will look to connect learning and different systems of knowledge around the teaching of history and civics to inform pedagogical change and social empowerment. The EDS-N+ network will support opportunities for collaboration between local, national and international school networks to enhance the social impact of public education, and improve access to quality education for young people, especially those from lower socio-economic groups. Collaboration across the layered networks of educators will enable curriculum and pedagogical innovation to be explored in a joined-up way, providing spaces for dialogue where expertise and experience can be shared, new learning achieved, and educational and social goals pursued. The focus on the teaching of history and civics is important as these are areas of the curriculum that go to the heart of identity and social practice, while the focus on transversal competences highlights the wider educational environment and the experiential opportunities provided to students.

The opportunity provided by the GCRF Development Award will be used to address a number of priorities over two stages of work. In summary, the first stage will involve the wider project group meeting in order to enhance and finalise the full stage proposal in the light of feedback from the outline stage. We will also continue the process of team-building amongst the wider project group and begin the process of expanding the group. In the second stage, two further meetings will be held in the Middle East and South East Europe to which local ODA country stakeholders will be invited. We will start to build and scale wider networks of educators and policy makers, and begin discussions with stakeholders on the key needs and priorities within and across the two regions. During this phase we will also start developing plans for the implementation phase after the final decisions on GCRF Network Plus submissions are made.

In the outline stage of the GCRF Network Plus submission we noted that the international nature of the EDS-N+ network made it essential that our impact strategy was cognisant of different cultural, political, and social facets, and that this required tailoring to local contexts in cooperation with local partners. The intention was that this would be informed by early stage discussions and scoping exercises, taking into account the varying policy contexts, needs and agendas of LMIC partners. The Development Award provides an opportunity to initiate this work before final decisions on the GCRF Network Plus awards are made. The Development Award, at this initial stage, will contribute to the co-design process of the EDS-N+ 'pathway to impact', and second, the Award will be utilised for scaling connections between different LMIC stakeholders, to enable effective and coherent implementation of the EDS-N+ 'pathway to impact' strategy.

The two primary groups of beneficiaries of the Development Award activities will be academics located in ODA partner jurisdictions and local stakeholders from ODA partner jurisdictions-that is, the Middle East and South East Europe. One of the key objectives for the Development Award is to explore ways in which resources and responsibilities can be shifted to colleagues in LMICs and help develop capacity in those jurisdictions, in line with feedback from the outline stage.

The Development Award will support three meetings: one of the wider project group members and two that will engage with local stakeholders in the partner regions. During these meetings, discussions will focus on the key needs and priorities in the ODA jurisdictions, the types of 'impact' that stakeholders hope to achieve, and explore the wider inequalities experienced within education in the partner regions (e.g. gender, ethnicity, language, ability, etc.)-we expect that these conversations will refine our Pathway to Impact and theory of change for the EDS-N+ network. Additionally, these meetings will provide an opportunity to lay the foundations for scaling the networks of LMIC stakeholders.

The two meetings in the partner regions will support team-building among the wider project group and include representatives from the NGOs that have already committed support for the project. This will likely be the first opportunity that the wider group will have had to meet and an initial priority will be to inform the wider team on initiatives and learning from each of the jurisdictions, with specific commissioned presentations on the education and policy contexts in the LMIC regions. Representatives from UNESCO and the Council of Europe (CoE) will also be invited to talk about their guidance materials on global citizenship and the framework for democratic competences, both of which are relevant for the EDS-N+ theory of change. This has the potential of exploring the implications of global policy frameworks across both LMIC partner regions and the benefit of connecting local LMIC stakeholders into arenas of international policy development.

One of the important aspects of the meetings will be to initiate discussions and collaborations between local LMIC stakeholders, who may or may not chose to participate in the EDS-N+ network. These potential connections will provide the building blocks of scaling up EDS-N+ activities in LMICs, as NGOs and other local LMIC stakeholders begin working together on commissioned projects. The regional meetings will provide an opportunity for local LMIC stakeholders to think about more joined-up and coherent delivery approaches that could reduce the cost of interventions and increase their reach-thereby enhancing local community outcomes and impacts.