New HEA National Access Plan

The Educational Disadvantage Centre welcomes the significant development in the HEA's DFHERIS new Higher Education Access Action Plan 2022-28, 

launched in September 2022, which explicitly refers to those who have experienced the care system as a priority group for access:

https://hea.ie/assets/uploads/2022/08/Online-National-Access-Plan-2022-2028-FINAL-1.pdf

See also the Minister's Foreword.

This has been a key request of the Educational Disadvantage Centre’s 2021 HEA submission to inform the new strategy. It has also been a central theme advocated for by the National Children in the Care of the State and the Education System Working Group established by the Educational Disadvantage Centre (https://www.dcu.ie/edc/national-children-care-state-and-education-system-working-group#overlay-context=edc/Children-Care-and-Education-System-National-Working-Group.shtml).

This group has previously written to the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to raise this issue, https://www.dcu.ie/sites/default/files/inline-files/ltr-minister-harris-nov2020.pdf and members of the National Children in the Care of the State and the Education System Working Group met with DFHERIS officials to discuss this in more detail in advance of the publication of the new national strategy.