The Department of Education and Youth is tendering for support in including children and young people in policy-making.
The Department is seeking to expert consultancy services to help embed a “culture of meaningful participation of children and young people in policy decision making,” according to a notice posted on Government procurement platform, eTenders.
The contract is worth approximately €143,000.
The winning bid can expect to work with the department’s “Student Participation Unit” to support its work to implement the recommendations in the department’s Student Participation Implementation Plan, which contains 50 actions to be completed by the end of 2026.
“The department will then publish an implementation report which will be heavily informed by the views of children and young people,” the tender description reads.
The Student Participation Unit was established in 2023 to promote the participation of youths in the development and implementation of department policy.
In the contract document itself, it’s stated that the department is committed to ensuring that the views of children and young people “are central to all its work and to the work of schools”.
Some of the “key actions” contained in the department’s implementation plan include developing and implementing a training plan for department staff on how to ensure the participation of children and young people in policy development; publishing an annual plan for student participation and an annual report on student participation that can be sent to children and young people; and including a student-friendly summary page in inspection reports on curriculum evaluations in primary schools and on subject inspections in post-primary schools.
This comes as part of a broader trend in governance of attempting to include children and young people in decision making.
Then-Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman published last year Ireland’s Participation of Children and Young People in Decision-making Action Plan 2024-2028, which aims to promote the inclusion of children and young people in decision making at all levels, from the home to the level of national government.
“The ambitions of this Action Plan will see the voices of children and young people embedded in decisions made across more government departments and agencies than ever before. Public policy can only be improved in the recognition of children and young people as citizens of today, not just adults of the future,” Mr O’Gorman said on the occasion of the action plan’s launch.