Education Minister Caitríona Ruane welcomed the report from the prisons inspector on Hydebank young offenders centre.

The minister said: "I visited Hydebank last year to see at first hand the educational facilities provided for young men by the NIO. Following the visit I wrote in November to Shaun Woodward and also to the Human Rights Commissioner to highlight my real concerns about poor provision of educational opportunities. I also raised these issues during a separate meeting with Paul Goggins.

"This report is to be welcomed, but it must prompt an immediate programme of improvements. It validates concerns I raised about educational provision and also identifies many areas for urgent attention. These young men deserve to be given appropriate opportunities to improve their resettlement prospects, and education can help do that."

HEALTH AWARD SCHEME

Health Minister, Michael McGimpsey announced his Department's continued support for the Integrated Health Award for 2008.

This award is run by the Foundation for Integrated Health and champions an integrated approach to health.

Any organisation – whether a school, workplace, healthcare or community service - can apply if they take an approach focussing on the whole person providing an environment that helps users achieve optimal health and wellbeing.

The Minister said: "We want to ensure recipients of the award receive the recognition they deserve and help inspire others to set up integrated health projects to the benefit of the community."

The closing date for applications is Friday 29 August 2008 at 5pm.

UNIVERSITIES ASSIST GROWTH

The latest survey of interaction between the Higher Education (HE) sector and business demonstrates the major role universities and colleges play in the UK economy.

The seventh Higher Education-Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey report shows that universities and colleges continue to make a substantial contribution to the economy and society across a broad range of activities. The survey shows that the two Northern Ireland HE Institutions have succeeded in increasing the breadth of their collaboration across the local economy.

This success is also reflected in the collaborative research income to the two universities which has increased by nearly one third from the previous survey.

Employment and Learning Minister Sir Reg Empey said: "As well as the substantial increase in collaborative research income achieved by our two universities, which now stands at over £14million, the value of individual research contracts with the two universities are now, on average, 50% higher than last year.

"Commercial businesses and non-commercial organisations are seeing the benefits that the expertise within our universities can bring and are spending almost £11million on contract research and a further £2.6million on specialist consultancy services," he said.

"This success reflects the growing emphasis of the universities on so-called Third Stream activities, i.e. business and community facing, the core funding for which is provided by my department and InvestNI."