IPEA

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IPEA takes part in the EPEA coordinated project The Virtual European Prison School. This brochure explain the involvement of the IPEA

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The Virtual European Prison School (VEPS)
is a project funded by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme. Its broad aim is to increase participation and widen access to education within European prisons. Its primary actions involved the transfer of best existing practices and the establishment of a web based Virtual Prison School.

The coordinating partner of the project is the EPEA (see over) and a wide range of prison educators from across Europe are involved. The IPEA (see over) is the Irish partner in the project. The other project partners are prison education services, organisations and bodies from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, England, France, Greece, Norway and Sweden.

The ‘Virtual School’ established as part of the project is a repository for educational programmes, teaching materials, course syllabi, etc which prison educators can access to assist international students study in their mother tongue while imprisoned abroad.

If you are interested in discovering more about VEPS please see http://www.prisoneducation.eu/

The Role of the IPEA
The IPEA is keen to enhance contact and cooperation among its membership and our colleagues in Europe; as a consequence we were delighted to be invited to participate in this project.

We were partnered with a school in a juvenile prison in Hellas (Greece) - 2ο ΓΥΜΝΑΣΙΟ ΑΥΛΩΝΑ ΜΕ ΛΥΚΕΙΑΚΕΣ ΤΑΞΕΙΣ (the Gymnasium and Lyceum in the Avlona Prison for Minors and Young Offenders) and were asked to disseminate and transfer best practices in Irish prison education with our Hellenic partners. We decided that ‘best practice’ in terms of the needs of our project partners were the Personal Development and Pre-release Programmes devised and developed by Irish prison educators.

Following much discussion, some research and a little training, a generic ‘pre-release programme’ was adapted and modified to suit their aims and objectives by our Hellenic partners and is being piloted in the Avlona Prison for Minors and young Offenders.

Marie Breen spoke about the involvement of the IPEA (Irish Prison Education Association) in the VEPS project www.prisoneducation.eu