Dr. Patrick Sullivan:

Yes, and the council continued to function during those years. However, one of the key processes in our work is to ensure consensus is building across the system on curriculum change. A key aspect of that is sustained and continued engagement with school communities, parents, children, school leaders and teachers. During that time, in emergency circumstances, when schools were closed and children learned at home, teachers taught from home and parents dealt with all of that in their home environment, there was no possibility for consultation and engagement with those constituents at that particular time so, in response, we took a two-phased approach. In March 2022, we closed consultation on the draft framework and now we are reporting on what we heard. We will finalise the final primary framework at the end of this year and it will be issued to the Minister in early 2023. In the meantime we will establish our development groups, which will work on the specification for the framework. SPHE and RSE are within a curriculum area called well-being, which includes physical education or PE and, therefore, they will be developed by the development group. It will be consulted upon widely with the public, schools, parents and children in our normal processes. We will draw on all of the research in this regard as well.