Squandered Opportunity: How Givan’s RAISE Programme Prioritises Privilege Over Poverty…
When our Minister for Education, Paul Givan, was gifted £20 million of funding from the Republic’s Shared Investment Programme ‘RAISE’, it should have provided a golden opportunity for addressing one of the principal causes of educational disadvantage – poverty. Instead he devised a bizarre formula for distributing the funds and one which prioritises privilege. We need be in no doubt about the significance of child poverty. According to the Northern Ireland Poverty and Income Inequality Report (2022/23 ) the percentage …