Dr. Patrick Sullivan:

The council has 26 members who are representative of the stakeholders, from early childhood education all the way through to post-primary school. In every meeting of the council, and in our development groups and boards, we have people around the table to support the system response the Deputy spoke about. Part of the system response includes aspects such as initial teacher education and continuing professional development for teachers on SPHE, RSE and throughout the curriculum. It is also about working closely with the Department of Education on support services, upskilling teachers, initial teacher education and realising the conducive conditions in which a curriculum is enacted in our schools. We work incredibly closely with schools through our networks. We work with 60 schools as part of the schools forum. They include preschools and post-primary schools and the forum is largely made up of primary schools. We have our ear to the ground on the needs of schools. We feed the information through our representative structures. In our review of RSE in 2019 there were implications from a systems point of view and not only with regard to curriculum and assessment. The recommendations have been supported by members of our council and the representative structure. The system response has been supported through our collaborative work with the Department and support services, initial teacher education and other important stakeholders.

With regard to the third strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, the timelines sit very comfortably with us in terms of delivery. We had input into the timelines. They reflect our expectations of what we will be able to deliver. An important context of the timelines is that in 2019 when the report on the review of relationships and sexuality education was published we had short-term and medium-term actions included. The short-term action was to meet the needs of teachers and students in our schools immediately. We developed the toolkits online and they are very comprehensive in nature. They are supportive of inclusive teacher and learning in RSE. The medium-term action was on curriculum development. As the timelines outline, in the coming weeks we will have consultation on the junior cycle, and consultation on primary and senior cycle will follow.

One of the biggest impacts on the timelines was the pandemic. For two years the pandemic impacted our work with schools. Many schools were closed. Many learners were at home. Parents were working with learners at home and supporting remote learning. Teachers were working from home supporting remote teaching. There was no way the NCCA could work with the people we needed to work with to develop and consult on curriculum specifications. We have been hampered by this. There is also the fact that 65% of our staff were redeployed to the HSE school support teams at that time. This was another contributing factor to the impact on the timelines for specification development. With regard to the third national strategy published a number of weeks ago, we are confident that we will meet the targets in the strategy.