Ms Orla McGowan:

I thank Deputy Martin for her comments and questions. On the status of social, personal and health education, SPHE, in schools, the Deputy is right that it is sometimes a headache for principals with regard to timetabling. The well-being curriculum that is coming on track in junior cycle will increase the status of SPHE and RSE in schools. It will take a few years for that to embed. With this RSE review, there are positive things on the horizon.

With regard to ethos, I agree that the current approach does not make much sense. It is not clear how a teacher will be able to teach about inclusivity and respect for diversity, and at the same time adhere to a Catholic ethos. I might not have made that point clear earlier but ethos should not come into relationships and sexuality education.

With regard to the Deputy's questions on RSE policy, all schools are required by the Department to have an RSE policy. The most recent study, the Lifeskills Survey 2015, showed that approximately 90% of schools have a policy, 8% are working on one and 2% have no policy in place. It is one of the areas the inspectorate will examine when carrying out inspections on RSE.

The Deputy also asked about the research study. She may have been referring to the study we commissioned. It is a study of the views of students, principals, teachers and parents about RSE delivery in their school. We designed it like that because we were hearing so many mixed reports about RSE in schools. On the one hand, we had large numbers of teachers attending training and we had developed new resources that were evaluating really well. However, on the other hand, young people were still saying they were not getting RSE. We want to find out what is going on and why teachers think they are providing RSE whereas young people say they are not getting it. What is missing? We hope the report will shed some light on that issue for us.