Ms Orla McGowan:

I would also like to respond to the question of outsiders doing RSE training. It is important to note that the Professional Development Service for Teachers, PDST, an agency funded by the Department of Education and Skills, already does RSE training for teachers. I understand that several hundred teachers are trained each year at primary and post-primary level. We have worked with it on the development of two different resources specifically for schools. Those are the Talking Relationships, Understanding Sexuality Teaching Resource, TRUST, for the senior cycle and B4UDecide for junior cycle. B4UDecide is being updated at present. It is important to acknowledge that there is already a support service doing this work and training many teachers. That is not the big problem.

The problem is that there is a revolving door of teachers attending training because the teachers are moved. They might teach SPHE one year, then it is changed and they are not teaching SPHE the following year. Teachers are not being given the opportunity to build on professional experience and to develop professionally in this area. In an ideal world, teachers would go to ten days of training and that would be accredited. Those teachers would build up professional expertise and then would be a resource within the school. That would make it less likely that the principal will move them on or chop and change the team. I understand that there are issues with contracts and changes are needed on occasion. The main point, however, is that the issue is not that we do not have people who can train in RSE. We do have people who can do that - the pedagogues here are doing it - but it is just one day and not being built upon year on year. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the answer is an accredited programme in SPHE and RSE.

When we are at that stage we would, as always, be working in partnership with the people who have expertise in this area, in addition to the Professional Development Service for Teachers, PDST.

In response to the question on ethos, a research study was conducted a number of years ago by Paula Mayock, Karl Kitching and Mark Morgan on RSE implementation at post-primary level involving nine schools. One school was picked out as an excellent example of RSE delivery. It was a single sex boys' Catholic school, which shows that it is possible to have good RSE taught in schools that have a Catholic ethos. I am not saying it happens all of the time but it would be wrong not to acknowledge that many teachers and principals are teaching comprehensive RSE even though they are in Catholic schools.