Galway & Roscommon Education & Training Board

Galway and Roscommon ETB is the second largest ETB in the country and includes three islands. Our region is renowned as a place where arts and culture are celebrated. Galway has been designated as the European Capital of Culture 2020, and GRETB, under Music Generation Galway is leading a new and exciting orchestral project for young people called “Symphonic Waves”, which was conceived under the Galway 2020 bid. County Galway has the single largest and most populous Gaeltacht area in the country. Promoting Gaeilge is an essential element of GRETB’s core service. We have eight Coláistί LánGhaeilge and a number of our Further Education and Training centres in Connemara, operate through Irish.

Galway and Roscommon ETB’s Strategy Statement 2017-2021 Empowering People for Life was published in early 2017.  GRETB’s mission is: To support individuals through learning, to achieve their full potential and contribute to social, cultural and economic development and its five core values are: Leadership, inclusivity, collaboration, innovation and inclusivity and accountability.

GRETB runs twenty second level colleges, an extensive adult education service and a range of post-leaving certificate courses. It is involved in many partnership activities at local level and provides a range of educational supports to enhance the quality of its education programmes. Galway and Roscommon ETB supports young people and adult learners through its schools, youth services and 40 further education and training centres.

GRETB is committed to promoting and supporting creative and cultural opportunities through arts in education programmes in second level colleges and in the school of music located in GTi in Galway city. The Further Education and Training Department in GRETB fully supports the creative arts and the potential the creative arts offer to engage learners, to assist them in their learning and also the potential of learners to produce creative arts of a very high standard and quality. GRETB supports a significant level of creative and cultural programmes for young people. PLC programmes offer opportunities for learners at QQI Level 5 and 6 in a range of programmes including, art portfolio preparation for people wishing to study art at a higher level, animation, a growth area in the Irish creative arts arena and drawing and visual inquiry. Programmes in fashion design, millinery and fashion retail and visual merchandising are also offered. The design and production of furniture is available at this level and the furniture produced is exhibited annually. There are a large range of media programmes available including film and documentary, music performance, studio and live sound production. GRETB is currently developing a Media based traineeship in partnership with Screen Training Ireland. This Media Production Assistant traineeship will offer an opportunity to learners to learn the skills of a production assistant while also completing an extensive on the job training experience.

GRETB is the lead partner in 3 neighbouring Music Education Partnership areas: Galway city, Galway County and Roscommon. In September 2017, GRETB was successful in its applications to Phase 2 of Music Generation and is now commencing the roll out of Music Generation vocal and instrumental tuition programmes with children and young people from January 2019.