The AONTAS STAR Awards is part of the annual AONTAS Adult Learners' Festival, and it celebrates and recognises the very best in adult, community, and further education across Ireland!
The Awards raises awareness of the fantastic work by education providers which is making a real difference to people’s lives.
This year, we will announce the winners at a special ceremony in Dublin on Friday 10th March – an exciting event to finish our 2023 Adult Learners’ Festival!
For the 17th AONTAS STAR Awards, we have five categories for adult learning initiatives that support people with:
The STAR Awards is judged by an independent panel of adult learners, tutors, and other adult learning experts. To reflect the range and high calibre of nominations, we’ll have two awards in the categories of Health and Wellbeing, Learner Voice, and Social Inclusion – one for smaller and one for larger initiatives.
We’re delighted to announce 26 shortlisted initiatives!
For adult Learning initiatives that support Global Citizenship Education:
In adult Learning initiatives that support Health and Wellbeing:
Small or medium category:
Large category:
Small or medium category:
Large category:
Small or medium category:
Large category:
For adult Learning initiatives that support Third-level Access & Engagement
On the day of the STAR Awards, we will also have Special Recognition awards for initiatives that support Peace-Building and Shared Island work, and for European Social Funded (ESF) initiatives.
For those not shortlisted, you should know that our panel of judges commented on the high quality of all nominations, with entries from a wide range of inspiring and innovative initiatives. It was a difficult decision to agree a shortlist.
The judging panel will meet each shortlisted group in person before deciding on the overall winners in each category. Best of luck to all!
The STAR Awards is proudly sponsored by the Open University in Ireland and the Open College Network Northern Ireland (OCN NI), the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI), Concern Worldwide, Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), the European Social Fund (ESF), Mental Health Ireland., and Saolta Project.
Sponsors will be offering special prizes to all 2023 STAR Award winners.
Click here to take a look back at the STAR Awards 2022 and see last year’s winners.
We’ll be sharing more details soon about the STAR Awards in person ceremony on 10th March 2023 in Dublin, so watch this space!
For further details contact Charis Hughes, AONTAS Head of Communications: