The policy strand stock-taking was the occasion to acknowledge that participating countries are starting to adapt and learn from the peer reviews in France, Finland and Northern Ireland. The peer reviews took place between December 2004 and May 2005. Each of the three countries visited its two peers for an in-depth three-day study of their education systems and wrote a peer review.

Supported by Alan McCluskey (CTIE Switzerland) and David Wood (University of Nottingham), partners in this strand are also developing a set of protocols and tools for peer learning between policy-makers, building up a collection of examples of practice and writing a number of studies of policy transfer.

The practice strand reported that most school peer learning visits – involving schools in The Netherlands, France, Northern Ireland and Finland – had now taken place and that the final round would take place in the autumn. School peer learning has proved to be more complex and fraught with difficulties for a variety of reasons that are being investigated. The University of Helsinki has produced a model for examining schools and this has been positively accepted by both ministries and schools.

Bert Jaap van Oel (Dutch Inspectorate of Education) reported on inspection strand work. The aim was to analyse approaches to ICT inspection in schools and the role of the inspectorate through peer learning visits between six inspectorates grouped into two clusters of three: Sweden, France, England, Ireland, Scotland and The Netherlands. The meeting was the occasion to report on the work done so far – which has broken new ground for those involved.

An unexpected but potentially fascinating aspect of P2P is the fact that each strand has echoes of the other two, and the project final report will attempt to capture something of the interplay between ICT policy, practice and inspection detected in the visits.

The evaluation and dissemination discussions centred on the importance of having clear conclusions, a replicable peer learning toolkit and using multiple channels. The new version of EUN’s observatory ‘Insight’ was a key element of the dissemination plans, as was the next EUN steering Committee in Vilnius on 22-23 September 2005. Another way to make P2P work known could be at the upcoming EMINENT conference on 8-9 December 2005 in Paris.